neous "grace" or goodness. We are invited to be reconciled; not through any change in the Deity, but by a transformation of ourselves; to accept what in fact was never withdrawn; to correct the strange distortion of our mental eye; to dismiss inveterate prejudices, especially those theological chimeras which so long made God a tyrant and his government a perpetual

menace or curse.

25

Jew Christians were not convinced by the arguments of St. Paul. These "zealots for the law" "24 stood aloof from their unproselyted brethren ", kept the passover with other Jews, scrupulously attended to washings, meats, circumcision, &c., and were in fact falling back into pure Judaism. The Apocalypse may exemplify how their imaginations revelled in visionary expectation of Christ's second coming in proportion as they were slow to appreciate the spiritual dignity of his first, and their bigoted animosity reduced St. Peter 26, and even, as it would seem, St. Paul", to the necessity of dissembling. Jews could not abandon Jewish notions 28, for it was their firm belief, a belief which they now transferred to Christian eschatology, that strict observance of the law was the essential preliminary of the coming, or second coming, of Messiah 29. While St. Paul abandoned the superannuated forms incompatible with spiritualism, the Judaizers had only engrafted a new name on old prepossessions; and the danger of patching old garments with new cloth anticipated by Jesus made itself felt in a violent disruption. Apologists of the liberal side might either strive to win over opponents by representing the new system as a furtherance of the old, or carry on the hostile tendency by declaring Judaism superseded. The former line of argument was available on both sides. St. Paul himself had spoken of Christianity as an inner or perfected Judaism 30; while even the Apocalypse

33

allowed the admission of heathen31 on the old-established condition of their being proselytes or servants of the Jewish tribes". St. Paul had attached far too much importance to the formulas which interpreted his feeling to himself; and the worn-out garment which he had garnished and given out for new " threatened to resolve itself into its "beggarly elements" of rags and tatters. The so-called Epistle of James sinks far below the view which it intentionally controverts; when advocating the new or perfect law of liberty" it makes even the sacrifice of Abraham a justifying meritorious act; yet, though St. Paul might easily have met the argument about faith and works on purely spiritual grounds", he had too closely connected his own notion of justification with O. T. typology to be able to deny the force of Abraham's example when quoted against himself. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, which, though widely differing from St. Paul, ostensibly advocates his principles against the reactionary Ebionitish feeling, the forms of Judaism are rather transferred than abolished, and Christ is the eternal high priest of an eternal and perfect law. The writer speaks of Christianity as the true Judaism, its aim the hitherto unrealised sabbath in a celestial Jerusalem 35; in the character of hierophant he upbraids his opponents with their slowness to discern the mystic aim and meaning of the old ordinances. The Levitical high priest was one raised above the level of common men, intermediate between the congregation and the Deity. He was fit to represent man as having man's nature. But the representative of the tribes by consecration was also united to God, or, as it is said, "Holiness to Jehovah." Vested in the cosmical robe and sacred tiara", anointed, and carefully reconciled by sacrifice, he at last became a part of the object he

31 Rev. v. 9; vii. 9.

33 2 Cor. v. 17.

32 Rev. vii. 4 sq.; xiv. 1; xxi. 12. 24. 34 Comp. 1 John v. 18.

35 Heb. iv. 9; xi. 10. Rev. xiv. 13; xxi. 10.

36 Exod. xxviii. 36; xxxix. 30.

37 Comp. Plin. N. H. 16, ch. iv. and supr. pp. 479, 480. 38 Outram de Sacrif. ch. v. p. 58.

adored, and sat down to share the hallowed food of the Deity". The priesthood of Christ is shown to have superseded the O. T. ministration through the evidence of the O. T. itself. He is not a priest of the house of Aaron, but of a new and higher order called after Melchizedeck; he is the perfect High Priest, who once for all made a perfect atonement, and thereupon entered not into an earthly tabernacle, but into the celestial “holy of holies" or actual presence of God". "The new priesthood involves the necessity of a new law;"42 and the new law is not the carnal commandment of dead works" but the living spirit written, according to prophecy, in the heart. We thus stand at the close of one epoch and commencement of another. Judaism is old and waning"; it seems still to exist, but its life is gone. The chrysalis has burst, a new divinity has passed into the temple. The old incomplete covenant is not merely succeeded but displaced: not so much, however, in the Pauline sense of an alteration of the inner man, as in that of a new external law and a new sacerdotal administration. With St. Paul faith had been all in all; it was opposed to works because implying a state of mind and life supposing and including their highest effect, and dependent on symbols only because symbols had been psychologically instrumental in elaborating its idea. The "Hebrews" rudely restores to the symbol its undue prominence, reducing faith considered as mere belief in things transcendental to the subordinate or instrumental function", and differing from the doctrine of "James" only in asserting faith to be necessary as well as works, instead of contending for works against the self-sufficiency of faith. The main doctrine of the Epistle, and of the later Christianity in general as opposed to Ebionitism, is

39 Exod. xxix. 32. Lev. viii. Rab. Levi Ben Gerson, in Outram, 1. c. "Post holocaustum autem sacrificium simile salutari (cujus pars Deo, pars sacerdotibus, pars offerentibus dari solet) eum in finem offerebant, ut eos jam in gratiam apud Deum eò usque receptos esse constaret ut communi cum eo mensâ uterentur."

40 Heb. vii. 11.

42 Heb. vii. 12. 44 Heb. viii. 13.

41 Heb. ix. 24.

43 Heb. vi. 1; vii. 16; viii. 8; x. 16. 45 Heb. xi. 6.

the reconcilement and endless life conferred in virtue of Christ's
divinity. In the old covenant the effect was imperfect, on ac-
count of the imperfection of the means. The blood of bulls and
goats could not effectually take away sin. It was otherwise
with the spotless sacrifice of Christ. The eternal priest of Mel-
chizedeck's order, the son of God and "express image of his
person," was far higher even than angels, not to say than any
descendant of Levi"; a superiority acknowledged by Abraham
himself when he gave tithes to its mysterious founder. His
office was not like the Levitical continued through a succession
of many persons, admitting its own incompleteness by a perpe-
tual repetition of its functions. Christ is the eternal minister
of the sanctuary built by God". By the sacrifice of himself
once offered he obliterated sin for ever. His resurrection is not
so much as St. Paul thought the positive integration of the
negative effect of his death, through which by some mystic
means the spiritual is substituted for the old Adam within us,
as an external act of his atoning ministry, in which he entered
the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood 50, becoming himself
glorified by the act1, and living for ever to make effectual be-
cause unceasing intercession " for those whom he redeemed and
made pure by it. The divine approximation" externally con-
ferred through atonement as opposed to the practical "righteous-
ness" of early Christianity and to the subjective" grace" of St.
Paul is the key to all later development. The faith already
exemplified in O. T. types is henceforth to be the consolation of
our patience while we contemplate the practical antithesis of
suffering and triumph in Jesus". Its object is the sanctifying
and saving import of Christ's personal functions. The writer

46 Heb. vii. 16.

52

47 Against the Ebionitish doctrine of Christ being an angel or new Moses.
Epiphan. Hær. xxx. 18.

48 Heb. vii. 4. Comp. Epist. Barnab. ch. xiv.

49 Heb. viii. 2.

51 Heb. ii. 10; v. 9.

53 Heb. vii. 19.

55 Heb. xii. 2.

50 Heb. ix. 25.

52 Heb. vii. 25.

4 Heb. x. 36.

would teach St. Paul's inferences, as he understands them, from premises strictly Jewish. The abolition of the law which the latter inferred from man's unsatisfactory relation to it, the former derives from the divine superiority of the new revelation and the character of its author. The claim which to one had been an inwardly assumed change is to the other an outwardly bestowed privilege. In both an individual benefit accompanies an individual act of faith; but the nature of the accruing "grace" differs with that of the conditioning faith; the one directing attention to the spiritual state of the subject, the other to the transcendant perfections of the mediator.

§ 5.

ASCENDANCY OF SPIRITUALISM; THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

The idea of Christ's person became elevated in proportion to the elevation of his religion. When from mere profession or performance the latter came to be considered as a new revelation perfecting or even superseding the old, corresponding importance was attached to the character of its author, exalting him from a pre-eminently gifted man into a second Moses, an Archangel, or even a God. The Christianity of the new covenant, called "power from on high," "power of God for salvation," or "power to become a son of God," was to the mind of St. Paul an inner change implying a revelation exclusively of the glorified Christ. Against Ebionitish lingerers. over the "old leaven" whose Christological views remained below the orthodox level, the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts Christ's superiority not only to Moses but to angels, and the "Colossians" in the same spirit declares him to be the "image of the invisible God, the pre-existent creator of heaven and earth, in whom dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead bodily." But the claim which thus raised Christianity and its author above

Col. i. 16; ii. 9.