Hebrews 5

7. For “was heard in that he feared,” read “having been heard by reason of his reverent submission.” A.—The inspired writers attribute to Christ all human properties and relations, such even as seem at first sight inconsistent with his Godhead. He was tempted, he prayed, he was heard in that he feared; with strong crying and tears he presented his petitions; he was troubled in spirit; he had angels to comfort him. With startling simplicity are all these facts recorded: and it can hardly excite surprise that reverence for his dignity, though in this case falsely applied, has attempted in every age to modify the form or to soften the meaning of the terms in which these truths have been conveyed. Let no Christian, however, scruple to employ these expressions or to give them their appropriate meaning. What may seem to be gained by restricting them, will be lost in the diminished fitness of Christ for his office as our Sacrifice and Advocate; in the unintelligibleness of the evangelical history; the introduction of a partial system of interpretation, and the exaltation of human reason above the plain and obvious import of Scripture. Such passages contain a truth as precious as it is obvious, as consolatory as it is ennobling. He stooped to our nature, that he might make us partakers of his own. J. A.

We are so tried and tossed, so compassed around with pain, so much apparently the sport of fanciful passion, so curiously framed as it were for temptation, with high aspirations living in us along with base desires; so hovering ever on the verge of good and ill, and so weak to choose the good; so troubled by the necessity of battle when our heart is weary with the passionate longing for rest; so sick of ourselves and of the vile cravings which at times possess us, that God knows we do want some sympathy higher than any one on earth can give us—some sympathy which will not weaken but strengthen; some certainty that the eternal love and righteousness can feel with us and assist us. Therefore it is the deepest blessedness to know that One who shared in our nature—the proper divine man—was in the days of his flesh a partaker of “our strong crying and tears,” and “learned obedience by the things which he suffered,” for then we know that he can, in his triumphant nature, be still “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” S. A. B.—When denied the objects we cherish; when these bodies are wasting with disease or racked with pain; when troubled on every side, it should be enough that, like our Divine Master, we are to “learn obedience from the things we suffer,” and be perfected through the same; that our sufferings worthily borne will improve and exercise our best virtues, prepare us for and entitle us to the best rewards; so fulfilling the inspired words that, “if we suffer together with Christ, we shall also together be glorified with him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with him.” H. H.

11. Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. 1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not 2 laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of 3 the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and 4 of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit. For it is impossible for those 5 who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers 6 of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to 7 come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to 8 themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. For the earth which 9 drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by 10 whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: but that which beareth thorns and briars 11 is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. But, beloved, we are 12 persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.

10. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed 11 toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the 12 end: that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

THE word rendered full-assurance carries with it the idea of fullness, such as of a tree laden with fruit, or of a vessel’s sails when stretched by a flavoring gale. The assurance of faith is a persuasion so firm as to be the basis and resting-place of all Christian reliance. It sees Christ, and believes in him. The assurance of hope is a settled, well-grounded, immovable persuasion and certainty, that I, as an indi- vidual, have thus believed; that I am in Christ; that God is my reconciled Father; that I shall never come into condemnation; and that my heaven is secure. The former is a universal duty; the latter is a gracious privilege. Professors who take their pleasure in this life do not seek this assurance, and do not find it. In chambers of disease and mourning, on death-beds, at the stake, or amid the wild beasts, it has risen to exultation. In the days of primitive piety, it seems to have been enjoyed by all the martyrs. In our day of half-way Christianity, when the children of this world are mingled with the children of light, it is less prized and less freely bestowed. If we had higher graces, we should have more assu- rance. In a better day, when the universal Christianity shall shoot up to a loftier stature, it will reappear. And, wherever among the throng any shall rise to superior eminence in holiness, his melting heart, fused into a flow of tenderness and love by the heavenly ray, will experience the pressure of this pledge and seal. J. W. A.

11,12. He tells them plainly how deficient they were in the improvement which might have been expected from the time that they had been in the school of Christ. Instead of being in a capacity of teaching others, they were themselves in the lowest class of learners. Their faculties through disuse had become so contracted as to refuse ad- mittance to the plainest truths, much more to doctrines so deep and involved as those which he had begun to state. Such is the spirit of the apostle’s reproof. The neglect, at least the slow improvement of the means of knowledge, has not ceased to be a reproach in these latter days. R. W.—One prolific source of religious indiffer- ence is that those who appear to the world as rep- resentatives of religion have but a meager and timid apprehension of the principle of perpetual growth inherent in the Christian faith. It is not that they are insincere in belief or feeling, but that they take the Christian privilege for a much less glorious thing than it is, and misconceive its mighti- est law. They exhibit it as negative when it really is positive; as attained and compassed by a single experience of conversion, whereas that is only the outset of an unceasing progress. Growth is the law of a true Christian life. Such a life is not satisfied, therefore, with conversion, but is quite as exacting of sanctification. Christianity wants to build after the pattern of a divine beauty, a sym- metry without blemish, and a wholeness without de- fect. It is itself incarnated in a living example of that completeness. It has a welcome for every con- tribution of science, only requiring that science shall remember its ministerial office, not exalting its telescopes and crucibles into an apparatus of will-worship, displacing dependence and redemp- tion. It has nothing but contempt for that com- placent, Pharisaic style of piety which fancies its only needed work is done when it has just grazed the gates of hell by sliding into a lazy church; which goes shuffling and dozing through a life that vibrates between formalities on Sunday and intense vitalities all the week. F. D. H.

13. Unskilful in the word. What Divine skill is evinced in so “dividing the word of truth” as to build up true Christians from one degree of perfectness to another in the divine life; from the babe to the man of full age; from the carnal to the spiritual; from the dull of hearing to those who, by reason of use, have their moral senses exercised to discern both good and evil! And how remarkable that, in all this work of building up Christians in their most holy faith, the word, the word, is the only instrument mentioned as wielded by the Spirit in the hand of a living ministry! J. S. S.

14. Nothing has been of more prejudice to Christianity than the premature indigested reason- ing of novices about its more speculative doctrines before they have been well established in its great and fundamental articles. Hence have arisen all those odious names with which particular sects have stigmatized one another, while they have thrown away that badge of charity by which the true disci- ples of Christ are most effectually distinguished. Justly, then, does the apostle say that strong meat belongeth only to them who, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil. R. W.

1. The Bible exhorts us to search, to meditate, to “dig for wisdom as for hid treasures,” which must mean that we should bring out the fresh and unexplored. It compares truth to a running well, which must be because it should be in movement, visiting and watering new pastures. It is, indeed, certain that the principles of the doctrine of Christ always remain the same, and yet the apostle exhorts us that we are “to leave them and go on unto perfection,” that is, to leave them and yet never to abandon them, as a tree leaves its root and yet never quits hold of it, as it has the vital sap from that constant source, and yet spreads away into branches and blossoms and fruit, without which it could never be a tree, and might as well lie dead. If we think that we honor the Bible by reiterating certain formulas caught from it without taking in the manifold illustrations of God’s word, and the manifold applications in human life, we shall find that the divine life deserts these formulas, and that a class of men spring up who deny in them the truth they have. Ker.

Looking only at God’s works of creation and providence, we could infer that sanctification, one of the greatest of his works, would also be one of progress—giving us no more reason to expect that a sinner on his conversion would suddenly grow up into a perfect saint than a seedling into a perfect tree, or the field sown to-day be to-morrow flashing with the sickles and joyous with the song of reapers. Grace has its dawn as well as day; grace has its green blade, and afterward its ripe corn in the ear; grace has its babes and its men in Christ. With God’s work here, as with all his works, progress is both the prelude and the path to perfection. Therefore we are exhorted to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Imitating him whom faith receives both as our propitiation and our pattern, we are by pains and prayer to grow in holiness and humility; in sweetness of temper and heavenliness of mind; in active obedience and patient suffering; in conformity to the will and delight in the ways of God. No doubt, whether our aim be high or humble, we always come short of the mark. Yet let us be thankful, though we have not reached, if we are nearing perfection; if, like the harbor lights, we see it ahead of us, not vanishing on the stern, but growing on the bow; if our course shows marks of progress. T. G.

The maturest manhood or saintliest womanhood ought to be seeking still, and for ever seeking—because the best are weak, truth is boundless, and the highest soul stands at an infinite remove from God. They that have not yet steadfastly set their faces as though they would go up higher are encouraged and solicited. They that have gone some way are bidden to press on. They that have mastered the worst enemies are cheered forward to be more than conquerors through him who hath loved them—whose face they have beheld, whose breath they have felt. Nor is it said to one of them more than to another, “Seek, and ye shall find.” From all the fountains of religious feeling, whose living waters leap as if an angel troubled them—from all trees of wise thought, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations—from all the lights in the starry heavens of the elder time, the ages of faith—from the spirits about us, on the right and the left, purer and calmer than our own, and shaming our uncertain steps—from our own failures and mortifications—from prayer and communion, from Bible and Providence, from Church and life—above all, direct from that mighty and loving heart of Jesus, out of which flows the spirit without measure—let us continually and faithfully seek—seek summit above summit of gracious attainment—seek depth below depth of God’s unfathomable love. So shall we not lose the way and miss our Father’s house, nor come halting and maimed there, but erect and healthful souls, save as we are bended in gratitude at the mercy that forgives, in penitence for the sins to be forgiven, and in reverence at the vision of him who makes his people whole. F. D. H.

4. A reason is here given by the writer why he will not attempt to teach his readers the rudiments of Christianity over again, namely, that it is useless to attempt, by the repetition of such instruction, to recall those who have renounced Christianity to repentance. The impossibility which he speaks of has reference (it should be observed) only to human agents; it is only said that all human means of acting on the heart have been exhausted in such a case. Of course no limit is placed on the divine power. Even in the passage 10: 26-31 (which is much stronger than the present passage), it is not said that such apostates are never brought to repentance; but only that it can not be expected they ever should be. C.

5. Revelation lays a solemn stress on the fact itself of immortality. It creates a conviction in every Christian that he ought to pass through his whole course here with the eyes of his faith and hope turned forward—a purifying influence from his future home perpetually breathing upon him: what Paul calls “the powers of the world to come.” F. D. H.—They are influences emanating from objects and realities which preceded the very existence of this world, and will remain after it shall be demolished; from God and Christ and angels; from eternity; from everlasting truth; from whatever region is that of the sublimest glory in the universe. They are “powers” of influence which all the best beings conspire to send. For even the departed saints are placed in combination with God, the Mediator, and the angels, in sending a beneficent influence on us below; by their memory, by their example, by their being displayed to our faith as in a blissful state above, and (we may believe) by their kind regard and wishes for those below. All these “powers,” these forces of influence, are sent through the medium and in virtue of the work of the Mediator, and bear in them a peculiar character, derived from him. They are “powers” which attract toward where they come from; which discipline, and refine, and prepare the soul for its grand future destiny, and to which it may surrender itself without reserve. They are powers from a world where our own great final interest lies. J. F.

6. If they shall fall away.** It is obvious that the writer does not think of actual apostasies of this fatal sort among his Hebrew converts. Observe what he says, verse 9: “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation” (literally things having salvation, involving, insuring it), “though we thus speak.” Do not understand us to imply that any such cases are occurring or will occur among you. It is therefore certain that in the writer’s view it might be proper to throw out this fearful warning against apostasy, although a case of real apostasy was not thought of as actually occurring. We may go further and say that, in the nature of things, such warnings against apostasy do not necessarily conflict with the revealed certainty which Jesus puts in these words: “My sheep hear my voice; I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” Such a warning as this is one of God’s appointed means to forestall fatal apostasy. The case for illustration often appealed to is always in point—that of Paul and his fellow seafarers (Acts 27 : 22-25). The Lord proposed to use the help of the sailors and never thought of saving all the souls on board in any other way than with their help. So Christ does not propose to save his sheep without many a solemn warning against apostasy. For apostasy must be fatal, and Christians must therefore fear it, shun it, as they would be saved at last. H. C.

4-6. This passage of God’s word belongs to all who have ever enjoyed the privilege of fully hearing the gospel, being enlightened by the word of God. There is not one specification in it which may not enter into the divine indictment against the whole multitude of men in Christendom, who from Sabbath to Sabbath have heard the word of God proclaimed and expounded. That good word of God, and those powers of the world to come, and those precious influences of the Holy Spirit accompanying them, have lifted them into a condition in which salvation was accessible and very near. But if, from all these advantages, these ladder-tops of means and grace, they fall away, or if, under all these influences and privileges, they remain unmoved, then there is no more hope. What possibility remains, after all the round of God’s applied expedients is run through and is ineffectual? Light, knowledge, love, warnings, threatenings, promises, invitations, commands, arguments, entreaties, gifts, powers, providences, the word, the Spirit, convictions, awakenings, the cross, the sufferings, the death of Christ, and the glories of heaven, and the terrors of hell, all applied in vain! What is there left, what more powerful, what as a last resort? What is there of hope or possibility to throw yourself back upon, after all the agencies of mercy in God’s universe have been tried in vain? G. B. C.

Some may go on grieving Christ and crucifying him afresh for as much as seventy years; and he will bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon them, and his creatures and his words will minister to their pleasure, and he himself will say nothing to them but to entreat them to turn and be saved. This may last to some for seventy years; to others it may last fifty; to many of us it may last for forty, or for thirty; none, perhaps, are so old but that it may last twenty, or at the least ten. But as these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy years pass on, Christ will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty will be less often heard; the distance between him and us will be consciously wider. Year after year the world will become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some softening joy, ever turns our minds toward Christ, we shall be startled at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him, that we can not earnestly believe in him; that, if we speak of loving him, our hearts, which can still love earthly things, feel that the words are but mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our flesh has destroyed all the power of our spirit and almost all its willingness; it is bound with chains which it can not break, and, indeed, scarcely desires to break. Redemption, salvation, victory—what words are these when applied to that enslaved, that utterly overthrown and vanquished soul, which sin is leading in triumph now, and which will speedily be given over to walk for ever as a captive in the eternal triumph of death! T. A.

It is not with open disavowal that the votary of fashionable worldliness disclaims the Lord of glory. A peril such as this might be met and warded off. But society does its work surely because slowly. Religion is not proved to be absurd, but assumed to be so; the world would not harshly ask us to disbelieve in Christ, but merely to forget him. Principles are lost for ever before we have dreamed they were in danger, and the poor victim of the world’s opinion has learned to “crucify afresh the Son of God,” without relinquishing one outward characteristic of discipleship! There are apostasies of the social table, of the fireside and the market-place, the refined apostasies of our own daily life, as real as the imperial treachery of a Julian or the cold-blooded abandonment of a Demas. To every one of these the same impress belongs; it may be branded more or less deeply, but it is branded on all. They are all alike rife with the spirit of Caiaphas’s council-chamber; they are all echoes of the voice that cried aloud, “Crucify him, crucify him!” W. A. B.

10. God is “not unrighteous to forget your work of faith and labor of love.” Whatsoever we are capable of doing for him, depend upon it we shall get the opportunity of doing. The way to get ready for, and the way to insure the possession of, the widest field for service and the loftiest opportunities of doing his will, is faithfully to fill the narrow sphere in which he at present sets us. Do the little, and God will provide the great. You have always as much to do as you have strength to do it with. If, by patient faith, by simple dependence upon Christ and his mercy, feeling yourself encompassed with an awful and impartial law of right which makes everything dreadful that is wrong, and everything noble that is obedience, you seek to execute God’s will, loving the Lord that has done the smallest things for you, the narrow sphere will widen and open itself, and lofty tasks and glorious work shall be given you. A. M.

11. All who come to Christ, making voluntary covenant with him, and continuing faithful to the end, are saved; not because in this life they necessarily become perfect, or free from the infection of original sin, but because they are in him who is perfect, and who will ultimately perfect them, when, after the blessed trials and the loving discipline of time, he brings them to the full vision of God, and presents them, at last, “faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” It is evident that this is not a gospel, nor a view of the gospel, which encourages indolence in the divine life, or allows men to rest satisfied with mere half-way attainments in grace. It puts every renewed heart to panting after perfection; it sets every foot which has been turned to God’s testimonies boldly and determinedly on the race toward perfection; and it throws unwonted terrors on the way of him who, having thus started, carelessly suffers a pause in his progress or a rest to his pantings after perfection. Still, it is a gospel, or a view of the gospel, which sheds not only hope, but “the full assurance of hope” on the way of him who, having been renewed by the Spirit unto repentance and faith in Christ, thus sets forth and thus perseveres on the Christian course, even though, amid the weaknesses of nature and the intensities of the conflict with evil, he come to the goal of death with something still of remaining sin within him. He has the beginnings of the “life hid with Christ in God”; and he knows, to his deep joy, that when he comes to see him he shall be fully “like him; because he shall see him as he is.” J. S. S.

12. He refers more directly to those Old Testament worthies, of whose names and deeds he gives so splendid a catalogue in a subsequent chapter. But the exhortation has relation to the examples of all believers, of every age, who, by the same means, have attained the like triumphs and rewards. They are described under the twofold ideas of the end at which they aimed, “they inherit the promises,” and the means by which they achieved their bliss, “through faith and patience.” T. E. V.—The gate of heaven is no wider now than it was seventeen hundred years ago. The law of God extends as far as it did when the apostles lived. We are bound to the same strictness and purity, to the same zeal and steadfastness, which distinguished the primitive Christians. They were all men of like passions with ourselves; they had the same corrupt nature to strive against, the same temptations to resist, the same enemies to overcome. Their advantages for performing their duty were not greater than ours; on the contrary, besides all that they possessed, we have the benefit of their example and experience. God’s hand is not shortened, the blood of Christ hath lost none of its virtue, his intercession is no less prevalent, nor is the power of his Spirit in the least impaired by length of time and constant exercise. So that we are entirely without excuse, if we do not both aim at and actually attain the same degrees of holiness and purity with any of those that have gone before us. R. W.

In the catacombs of Rome you behold the long tiers, or alcoves, of the graves of those who, having died in faith, inherit the promises. No symbols of hateful passion, no tokens of revenge for the wrongs they smarted under, no wails of heathenish despair, no signs of bloody altars; but, instead, the tokens of peace, hope, and joy; pictures of love; legends of reconciliation; a monogram of the Saviour; a lamb; a branch of palm; a cross; some epitaph commemorating a “friend of all men,” “an enemy of none,” “one meek and lowly,” those that “sleep in Jesus,” or others “borne away by angels.” Everywhere you see traces and proofs of that heavenly temper, that pure and prayerful spirit, that disinterested and self-denying piety, that influence from on high which you know was never the product of the Roman nature, never caught from Roman philosophers, never fostered by the Roman armies, never ordained by Roman law, never inspired by Roman mythology, the gift of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the heritage of his Church, the new creation, the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. F. D. H.