Hebrews 13

28. Receiving a kingdom that can not be moved.** We are citizens of a commonwealth that has in it no seeds of dissolution, members of a society that shall have no discordant element, united in a polity whose only law is love, entering on a destiny where all possibility of disaster, all the contingencies of evil, are excluded for ever. There is something inexpressibly touching, as well as sublime, in the idea of the eternal duration of such a kingdom; in the thought of that dear communion which may be held for ever with spirits kindred with your own, not selfish, not isolated, but bound each to each by the common bonds of high intelligence, and the warmest spiritual sympathy, and all allied in undying affection to one common and glorious Head, who feels toward all the most complacent delight, sheds upon all his selectest influence. This mutual communion, this idea of a celestial commonwealth, is founded in the nature of man, on which grace places the seal, and effects its realization. Prophet and evangelist, rapt in vision, could imagine heaven itself in no other way so worthily. B. B. E.

29. God is still (as ever) “a consuming fire” to all who disown his authority and discard his mercy. These words are apparently taken from Moses, Deut. 4 : 24, where they stand in connection with his recital of the scenes of Sinai: “For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous

God.” He means to declare emphatically that God remains for ever the same in his abhorrence of sin; the same in his consuming vengeance toward those who despise his gospel as toward those who disown his law. H. C.—Must not men be blind and deaf who fail to see and acknowledge that the God-Father in revelation, providence, and nature is not all smiles? There are the bursting of a mountain, a stream of fire, and a burning sea on the very spot where yesterday was the blooming of an Italian garden. God is love; penitent hearts find him thus. God is a consuming fire, and impenitent hearts feel him to be such. No one can study his providences without discovering the unyielding justice that forgives not, but holds the impenitent and self-hardened victim aloof for ever. L. T. T.

No man even is a proper man, whose moral nature is not put in armor by the wrath-principle. Much less is God true God, when no such central fire burns in his bosom, to make him the moral avenger of the world. The eternal King is King indeed, and no such dispenser only of the confections and other sweet delectations of favor, as the feeble gospel of modern philanthropism requires him to be. Oh, the wrath of the Lamb!—there is the rugged majesty of meaning that transgression needs to meet! Smooth and soft things only will not do. If Christ bends low at his cross, no such fearful words of warning and severity as his were ever before spoken. The Old Testament is a dewfall in comparison with the simply judicial, spiritual, unbending, and impartial wrath of the New. As certainly as God is God, and Christ his prophet, he will not come bringing pardons only, suing and suing to the guilty; but over against all obstinacy he will kindle his fires of justice, and by these he will reign—even where by love he can not. H. B.

1. 1 Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some 2 have entertained angels unawares. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with 3 them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. Marriage is 4 honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. 2. 5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye 6 have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly 7 say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose 8 faith follow, considering the end of their conversation: Jesus Christ the same yesterday, 9 and to day, and for ever. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have 10 not profited them that have been occupied therein. We have an altar, whereof they have

11 no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is 12 brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Where- fore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the 13 gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For 14 here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come. By him therefore let us offer 15 the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his 16 name. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. 17 Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for 18 that is unprofitable for you. Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all 19 things willing to live honestly. But I beseech you the rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner. 20 Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great 21 Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good word to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. 22 And I beseech you, brethren, suffer the word of exhortation: for I have written a letter 23 unto you in few words. Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty; with whom, 24 if he come shortly, I will see you. Salute all them that have the rule over you, and all the 25 saints. They of Italy salute you. Grace be with you all. Amen.

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. From out of the blazing heart of the glory, the same tender face looks that bent over sick men’s pallets, and that turned on Peter in the judgment- hall. The hand that holds the scepter of the universe is the hand that was nailed to the cross, and that was stretched out to that same Peter when he was ready to sink. The breast that is girt with the golden girdle of priestly sovereignty is the same tender home on which John’s happy head rested in placid con- tentment. All the love that ever flowed from Christ flows from him still. To him, “whose nature and whose name are love,” it matters nothing whether he is in the house at Bethany, or in the upper room, or hanging on the cross, or lying in the grave, or risen from the dead, or seated on the right hand of God. He is the same everywhere and always. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” A. M.—O sons of men! perplexed by all the apparent contradictions and cross purposes and opposing powers and princi- ples of this strange, dark, noisy time, remember to your comfort that your King, a man like you, yet very God, now sits above, seeing through all which you can not see through; unraveling surely all this tangled web of time, while under his guiding eye all things are moving onward, like the stars in their courses above you, toward their appointed end, “when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power, for he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.” And then, at last, this cloudy sky shall be all clear and bright, for he, the Lamb, shall be the light thereof. C. K.

4. If you regard the necessity of marriage, God found it good to give man a wife; if the antiquity, it was ordained in the beginning of the world; if the place, in Paradise; if the time, in the innocency of man. If you regard anything the rather because of him that ordained it, God was the author of mar- riage. . . . If you seek the allowance, Christ ap- proved it by his birth in marriage and by his pres- ence at marriage; if the dignity, it is honorable; if among whom, in all men of all estates, of all callings, in prince, in subject, in minister, in priest, and in people. Bp. Jewell.—Christianity has ex- alted marriage to the highest dignity, and crowned it with the most sacred beauty: it is the symbol of the union of Christ and his Church; and the con- summation of hope, purity, and joy in heaven, is typified under “the marriage-supper of the Lamb.” Marriage is the festival of love, and as such, should be attended with all that represents beauty and fe- licity; it is the festival of joy, and, as such, should be a time of preëminent joyousness to all who as- sist in its solemnities. But it is also a festival of consecration; and it should be hallowed with the word of God and prayer. J. F. T.

5. The word “conversation,” as used in our version, illustrates the instabilities of language. The translators seem to have had a special partiality for this word, using it once (in this verse) for the Greek tropos; thirteen times for the Greek anas- trophe; twice (in Philippians) for polis or its com- pounds. They did not foresee that within two and a half centuries it would have lost every one of those meanings, and have settled down into a sense quite remote from any one of them. H. C.

Without covetousness. Covetousness gen- erates discontent; and this is an element with which no Christian grace can long be held in affinity. It magnifies trivial losses, and diminishes the most magnificent blessings to a point; it thinks highly of the least sacrifice which it may grudgingly make in the cause of God, feels no enterprise in his service, and never considers itself at liberty to leave its little circle of decent selfishness, in which its murmurs on account of what it has not are always louder than its thanks for what it has. “Let your conversation,” therefore, says the apostle, “be without covetousness.” J. H.—He content. One thing which we have to do in the pursuit of holiness is to be satisfied as regards our condition, so as not to indulge a wish for the change of it. Let our whole care be to serve God in the present moment of our lives; to taste the peace of the present pardon offered to us freely through the blood of Jesus Christ; to meet faithfully the obligations and responsibilities which the passing hour devolves upon us; to improve to the utmost present opportunities either of doing or receiving good. E. M. G.

“I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” There are five negatives in the Greek, to assure God’s people that he will never forsake them. Five times this precious promise is renewed in the Scripture, that we might have the stronger consolation, and that we might press and press it again, till we have gotten all the sweetness out of it. Brooks.—All other things may forsake you. Riches may take wings and fly away; friends may desert you, or they may die; your health and strength may fail and decay; yea, memory, judgment, and all the faculties of your mind may be weakened or destroyed: “But I will never leave you, I will never forsake you”; my friendship is unchangeable; “And whom I love, I love to the end.” All this, saith the apostle, God hath said; but he doth not tell us when or where he hath said it, because he hath said it so often. R. W.

7, 8. “The end of whose life considering, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same,” etc. A.—The Biblical representation is that for evermore, by an indissoluble union, the Human is assumed into the Divine, and that “to-day and for ever” He remains the man Christ Jesus. That truth is the very hinge on which turn our loftiest hopes. Without it, that mighty work which he ever carries on of succoring them that are tempted, and having compassion with us, were impossible. Without that permanent manhood, his mighty work of preparing a place for us and making heaven a home for men because a man is its Lord, were at an end. Without it he in his glory would be no prophecy of man’s dominion, nor would he have entered for us into the holy place. Grasp firmly the essential, perpetual manhood of Jesus Christ, and then to see him crowned with glory and honor gives the triumphant answer to the despairing question that rises often to the lips of every one who knows the facts of life, “Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain?” A. M.

The true view regards Christ as showing forth not only a perfect humanity, but also and primarily God himself; representing God to man, as well as man to himself; being the express image of God’s person; being God in the act and character of revealing or manifesting himself, creating and saving the world; separate at no point from God’s sovereignty, nor knowing, in his divinity, any limitation or abridgment from the fullness of God; exhibiting, as in God’s behalf, through a union of nature with the Father not explicable to us, the divine attributes; and reconciling alienated souls by manifesting God in his flesh. According to this doctrine, he survives in his Church to this day, and will survive, not only by influence and memory, but by the presence of his person; a distinct and everlasting person in himself, without beginning of days or end of years, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Consult the inmost faith of the truly believing heart, which has once given all to him who gave himself for us, and see what a bleak bereavement would fall like midnight upon it if you were to sweep away from it this perpetual privilege of confiding, loyal, adoring fellowship with its ascended, crowned, and yet ever condescending King. F. D. H.

9. Carried about.** The allusion is to ships at sea. Like these driven by contrary winds, are unestablished minds under the influence of diverse and strange doctrines. They are in doubt as to the truth of what they had believed; they profess now one thing and now another; and some at last “make shipwreck of the faith and a good conscience.” The doctrines referred to are described as being diverse, as they are inconsistent with each other, and strange, as they are inconsistent with the gospel—unknown or not received by the church of Christ and its accredited teachers. This explanation is suggested by the words immediately following, “It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace.” The gospel is a scheme of grace. Whatever doctrines deny, conceal, or frustrate the grace of God in the salvation of his people—his grace in their effectual calling by the working of his power—his grace in their justification through the redemption of Christ—his grace in their preservation by his indwelling spirit unto eternal life—are diverse and strange. It is therefore “good,” approved of God, and for the peace and salvation of the soul, “that the heart be established” in a firm reliance on the grace of God, as here revealed, and not on a distinction of meats as clean or unclean, according to an abrogated ritual. N. P.

10. As the Lord’s body was broken on the cross once for all, so is that breaking symbolized when we break the bread in the communion: but as it is heresy to regard the holy communion as a repetition of the Lord’s sacrifice, so is the term “altar,” in any strictness, quite inapplicable to the Lord’s table. And no such application is sanctioned here. The altar spoken of is the cross, on which the one victim suffered once for all. A.—Whether in a Pagan, Jewish, or Christian dress, the world’s religion is ever the same thing, a substituting of man for God, of pretense for reality, of form for substance, of bodily observance for spiritual obedience, for the subjugation of the soul to the law and will of God. Such a religion must go, and go entirely, if we would become the real disciples of Jesus Christ. It will not blend with the gospel, and we must not attempt to make it blend with it. “We have an altar,” says the apostle, “whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle”; they will not eat of it, and if they would, they are prohibited; they can not.

11,12. The blood of these animals was shed, that it might be taken “into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin,” as a propitiation for sin; their bodies were burned as a testimony of the divine indignation against sin. When these two ceremonies had been gone through, God is said to have been reconciled to his people; the whole camp was considered as purged from its transgressions. And what was the end for which our Lord suffered? It was that his people, his spiritual Israel, might have sin removed from them: “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.” 13. He is still without the gate, beyond the boundary of the world’s tents, and we must be content to leave the world behind us, or never go to him. His own language on this point is some of the plainest and strongest that ever fell from his lips. He calls upon us to forsake all we have for him, and tells us that if we do not forsake it, we can not be his disciples. C. B.

14. The man of God dwells in a tent or tabernacle in this world, and not only wants no city here, but feels that he can find none. Still his nature longs for something abiding. Death, decay, change, uncertainty are alien from his nature; they run counter to the longing for immortality which is within him. Such an abiding-place God, his God, hath provided for him. It is a city which hath foundations, whose builder is the everlasting one, and which the skill of such a builder has made indestructible. It is a permanent home. He who is admitted into its gates is no more an emigrant or a pilgrim. This city henceforth is to be his continual home, and his rest. T. D. W.—The country or city of Christians is not here. The true and eternal happiness of Christians is not here. He that seeks happiness in the world will not have it in heaven. Our country is Paradise, our city is the heavenly Jerusalem; usalem; our fellow-citizens are the angels, the patriarchs and prophets, the apostles and martyrs; our king is Christ. Let us therefore lead such a life in this pilgrimage, that as long as we are here we may be able to long for such a country as that is. Aug.—Christian life is meaningless if it is not a thing separate from the life of the world, in its springs and its manifestation. Christian character has nothing distinctively to commend itself, if it read not its title clear to mansions in the skies. To speak of ourselves as pilgrims and strangers is but a wordy utterance, unless, in truth, we do look for a city of God and a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Men never grow unworldly whose hopes are bounded by earthly horizons. They never grow upward toward God in reaches of spiritual aspiration and enjoyment till they put their chief good where Christ bids us all to lay up our treasure. Haydn.

15. The Christian sacrifice is a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” contrasted with the propitiatory sacrifices of the old law, which were for ever consummated by Christ. C.—That in the sacred supper there is a sacrifice in that sense wherein the fathers spake, none of us ever doubted; but that is eucharistical; that is, as Chrysostom speaks, a remembrance of a sacrifice; that is, as Augustine interprets it, a memorial of Christ’s passion celebrated in the Church. And from this sweet commemoration of our redemption there arises another sacrifice—the sacrifice of praise; and from thence a true peace-offering of the Christian soul. Bp. H.—All our graces are His free gift, and are given as the rich garments of this spiritual priesthood, only to attire us suitably for this spiritual sacrifice of his praises; as the costly vesture of the high-priest under the law was appointed to decorate him for his holy service, and to commend (as a figure of it) the perfect holiness wherewith our great High-priest Jesus Christ was clothed. What good thing have we that is not from the hand of our good God? And receiving all from him, and after a special manner spiritual blessings, is it not reasonable that all we have, but those spiritual gifts especially, should declare his praise and his only? L.

Be much in the angelical work of praise. The more heavenly the employment, the more will it make the spirit heavenly. Praising God is the work of angels and saints in heaven, and will be our own everlasting work; and if we were more in it now, we should be more like what we shall be then. The liveliest emblem of heaven that I know upon earth, is when the people of God, in the deep sense of his excellency and bounty, from hearts abounding with love and joy, join together both in heart and voice in the cheerful and melodious singing of his praises. These delights, like the testimony of the Spirit, witness themselves to be of God, and bring the evidence of their heavenly parentage along with them. Bax.—Let not merely thanksgiving, but praise, always form an ingredient of thy prayers. To be large and fervent in praise counteracts the natural tendency to selfishness which is found in mere prayer. And it shall often happen that when thy heart is numb and torpid, and yields not to the action of prayer, it shall begin to thaw, and at last burst, like streams under the breath of spring, from its icy prison, with the warm and genial exercise of praise. The deadness, the distractions thou deplorest, shall flee away as the harp is taken down from the willow, and strung to celebrate the divine perfections. For how much is there to kindle the heart in the very thought of praise! Praise is the religious exercise—the only religious exercise—of heaven. Angels are offering it ceaselessly, resting not night or day. Saints are offering it ceaselessly in Paradise. Nature in her every district is offering it ceaselessly. And the sense of sympathy in the exercise shall kindle life in thee, and the soul shall recover its benumbed energies, and prayer shall be no more a painful wrestling with thy own mind, but a solace, and a strength, and a light, and a healing. E. M. G.

16. The true philosophy or method of doing good is, first of all and principally, to be good—to have a character that will of itself communicate good. There must be and will be active effort where there is goodness of principle; but the latter we should hold to be the principal thing, the root and life of all. H. B.—The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it and in him who exercises it; and it will not only sooth and tranquilize a troubled spirit, but inspire a constant flow of content and gaiety of heart. P.

When mercy is shown and done as duty, and according to the manner God hath required, it is a pledge of mercy from on high. “To distribute, forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” Alms must be sacrifice, given to men for God’s sake. The right spring of mercy is from a sense of God’s mercy; it is a thank-offering, not a sin-offering. T. M.—By leaving the poor always with us—and not only the poor, but the sick and the sorrowing, the depraved and the ignorant—and by making the disciple the salt of the earth, the light of the world, Jesus virtually says to each follower: “It is a world of poverty, be ye my almoner; it is a world of darkness, be ye my torch-bearer; it is a mighty lazaretto—a world of disease and sickness, of agony and pain—be you my ministering angel; it is a world of ignorance and depravity, be you my missionary.” Hamilton.

There are many interests in society to which we are under continual obligation—not to our fellow-men merely, not to ourselves merely, but to God—to give them whatever of aid and furtherance it is possible for us to give. Enterprises that seek the intellectual culture of mankind, the founding of a library, the building up of schools and institutions of learning, the circulation of a true and enlightening literature; enterprises which seek to further the secular and social interests of the community; enterprises that concert for the public welfare in the matter of health, in the matter of public order, in the matter of just and liberal government; patriotic enterprises which seek to advance and establish the well-being of a nation—all these, and many others of a like nature, are as obligatory upon the Christian as a duty which immediately concerns the instruction of men in religious truth. R. S. S.

THIS book should be read and interpreted throughout, under a recollection of the fact that it was addressed to Hebrews, and skillfully adapted to the condition of the native Christians in Palestine a few years before the downfall of Jerusalem. Nevertheless the Epistle is most profitable to Gentile Christians also. The Bible of our religion is formed of the books of the Old and New Testaments; and it concerns us, even though our fathers never were under Moses, to know the order in which divine truth has been revealed to mankind, and divine privilege conferred on believers. Invaluable, therefore, to us is the book which explains more clearly than any other how the New Testament was enfolded in the Old, and the Old Testament is unfolded in the New. D. F.