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o his discourse. Its theme is the primacy of the priesthood embodied in Melchizedek over that represented by Aaron, and the bearing of this on the glory of Him who is proclaimed a priest for ever after Melchizedek's order. This theme is presented under headings, somewhat as follows. First (verses 4-14), the one priesthood is greater than the other in order. Abraham, bearing the whole Aaronic hierarchy potentially within him, defers to Melchizedek as to his greater. Hence, among other inferences, the sacred Personage who is a priest for ever after Melchizedek's order, wholly independent of Levitical limits, must dominate and must supersede the order of the sons of Aaron with their inferior status and with their transitory lives. Secondly (verses 15-19), the one priesthood is greater than the other in respect of the finality, the permanence, the everlastingness, of the greater Priest and of His office. He is what He is "for ever, on the scale of the power of indiss

ναμιν ζω??

ightens into an "application" to the human heart. We have in Jesus (the Name has now already been pronounced, ver. 22) a Friend, an Intercessor, infinitely and for ever competent to save us, His true Israel. We have in Him a High Priest supreme in every attribute of holiness and power, and qualified for His work of intercession by that sacrifice of Himself which is at once solitary and a

curacy of it; indeed the symmetry and order of the chapter make it almost inevitable that some such line should be taken by the explanation. Thus then it lies be

, "our Lord's argument breaks down." All I would remark upon such utterances, coming from men who all the while sincerely adore Christ as their Lord and God, is that they must surely open the way towards conceptions of His whole teaching which make for the ruin of faith. For the question is not at all whether our Redeemer consented to submit to limits in His conscious human knowledge; I for one hold that He assuredly did so. It is whether He consented to that sort of limitation which alone, in respect of imperfection of knowledge, is the real peril of a teacher, and which is his fatal peril-the ignorance of his own ignorance, and a consequent claim to teach where he does not know. In h

44; Luke xx. 42.

that exposition guarantees at once a typical mystery latent in Gen. x

our chapter for us, in view

the argument of this chapter, unless it elaborately veils its true self in clouds, goes directly to shew that such properly mediatorial functions, in the age of Christ, are for ever withdrawn from "men, having infirmity." Where they stood of old, one after another, sacrificing, interceding, going in behind the veil, permitted to draw nearer to God, in an official sanctity, than their brethren, there now stands Another, sublime, supreme, alone. He is Man indeed, but He is not "man having infirmity." He is higher than the heavens, while He

hapter means what it says. Mediatorial priesthood, a very different thing from commissioned pastorate, has no place in

s inmost message, a glorious positive. It gives us the certainty that, for every human heart which asks for God, this wonderful Christ, personal, eternal, human, Divine, is quite im

nually take Jesus Christ for granted in all the fulness and splendour of His High-priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. That Priesthood is for ev

to Christ. The camp moved after a while, and the young man, dying of consumption, took a Bible with him. Time rolled on, and one day a gray-haired gipsy came to the minister's door; it was the youth's father, with the news of his son's happy death, and with his Bible. "Sir, I cannot read a word; but he was always reading it, and he marked what he liked w