PUBLISHER'S LOGO LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1909 The Bible is the Sky in which God has set Christ the Sun.               John Ker, D.D. First Edition May 1909 Second Impression July 1909...

CONTENTS The following chapters are the work of intervals of leisure scattered over a long time. The exposition had advanced some way when an unexpected call to new and exacting duties compelled me to put it aside for several years. Accordingly a certain difference of treatment in the later chapters as compared with the earlier will probably be seen by the reader, particularly a rather fuller detail in the exposition. But purpose and plan are essentially the same throughout. No attempt whatever

CONTENTS CONSIDER HIM Heb. i.-ii. Let us open the Epistle to the Hebrews, with an aim simple and altogether practical for heart and for life. Let us take it just as it stands, and somewhat as a whole. We will not discuss its authorship, interesting and extensive as that problem is. We will not attempt, within the compass of a few short chapters, to expound continuously its wonderful text. Rather, we will gather up from it some of its large and conspicuous spiritual messages, taken as messages of

CONTENTS A HEART OF FAITH Heb. iii. We have just endeavoured to find a message, "godly and wholesome, and necessary for these times," in the opening paragraphs in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We come now to interrogate our oracle again, and we open the third chapter as we do so. Here again we find the Epistle full, first, of "Jesus Christ Himself." He is "the Apostle and the High Priest of our profession" (ver. 1), or let us read rather, "our confession," the "confession" of us who are loyal to H

CONTENTS UNTO PERFECTION Heb. iv.-vi. Our study of the great Epistle takes here another step, covering three short but pregnant chapters. So pregnant are they that it would be altogether vain to attempt to deal with them thus briefly were we not mindful of our special point of view. We are pondering the Epistle not for all that it has to say, but for what it has to say of special moment and application for certain needs of our own time. The outline of the portion before us must accordingly be tr

CONTENTS OUR GREAT MELCHIZEDEK Heb. vii. There is a symmetrical dignity all its own in the seventh chapter of the Hebrews. I recollect listening, now many years ago, to a characteristic exposition of it by the late beloved and venerated Edward Hoare, in a well-known drawing-room at Cromer—a "Bible Reading" full alike of mental stimulus and spiritual force. He remarked, among many other things, that the chapter might be described as a sermon, divided under three headings, on the text of Psalm cx.

CONTENTS THE BETTER COVENANT Heb. viii. The Person and greatness of our High Priest are now full before the readers of the Epistle. The paragraph we enter next, after one more deliberate contemplation of His dignity and His qualifications, proceeds to expound His relation to the better and eternal Covenant. We shall find here also messages appropriate to our time. The first step then is a review, a summing up, a "look again" upon the true King of Righteousness and peace (verses 1, 2). "Such a Hi

CONTENTS SANCTUARY AND SACRIFICE Heb. ix. The Epistle has exhibited to us the glory of the eternal Priest and the wealth and grandeur of the new Covenant. It advances now towards the Sanctuary and the Sacrifice wherein we see that covenant sanctified and sealed, under the auspices of our great "Priest upon His throne." The Teacher first dilates to the Hebrews upon the outstanding features of the type. He enumerates the main features of that "sanctuary, adapted to this (visible) world" (τὸ ἅγιον,

CONTENTS FULL, PERFECT, AND SUFFICIENT Heb. x. The heaven-taught Teacher has led us now along the avenue of the Levitical fore-shadowings, through the prophetic symbolism of the old high-priesthood, through the holy place and the holiest. The pathway, marked by the blood of animal sacrifices, hallowing the awful terms of the covenant of works, has brought us to the true Tabernacle and true Sacrifice, to the better and final Covenant, to the supreme High Priest. The teaching has left us, as the n

CONTENTS FAITH AND ITS POWER Heb. xi. (I.) The eleventh chapter of the Hebrews is a pre-eminent Scripture. With the fullest recognition of the Divine greatness of the whole Bible, never forgetting that "every scripture hath in it the Spirit of God" (2 Tim. iii. 16), we are yet aware as we read that some volumes in the inspired Library are more pregnant than others, some structures in the sacred city of the Bible more impressive than others, more rich in interest, more responsive to repeated visi

CONTENTS FAITH AND ITS ANNALS Heb. xi. (II.) We considered in the last chapter the account of Faith with which the apostolic Writer opens this great recital of the "life, work, and triumph of faith" in holy human lives. His words, as we found, lend themselves to some variety of explanation in detail: the term ὑπόστασις alone may be interpreted in at least three ways. But I do not think that this need disturb us as to the essential meaning of the description. Each and all of the renderings leave

CONTENTS FOLLOWERS OF THEM Heb. xii. 1-14 The Epistle approaches its close. The Writer has much yet to say to the disciples upon many things, all connected with that main interest of their lives, a resolute fidelity to the Lord, to the Gospel, and to one another. But he has not yet quite done with that side of their "exceeding need" to which the antidote is the faith which can deal with the future as the present, with the unseen as the seen. Upon this theme, from one aspect or another, is spent

CONTENTS SINAI AND SION Heb. xii. 14-28 The paragraph before us is largely concerned with the inner life of the believing community, its cohesion member with member, and the call to each member and to all to "walk warily in dangerous days," in the path of evangelical holiness. The Writer lays it upon them (ver. 14) to "pursue peace with all," such peace as always tends , even in bad times, to reward the "sons of peace," while they so behave themselves as never on their own part to contribute a f

CONTENTS APPEALS AND INSTRUCTIONS Heb. xiii. 1-14 The last chapter of the Epistle has a character quite of its own. Unlike many of those often arbitrary divisions of the New Testament books which we know as chapters, it is a naturally separate section. The long and sustained arguments are over. The Writer's thoughts, gravitating to a close, and occupied naturally as they do so with the personal conditions of his Hebrew brethren, attach themselves now to one now to another side of their duties, t

CONTENTS LAST WORDS Heb. xiii. 15-25 The connexion of ver. 15 with the antecedent context is suggestive. We have been led to a contemplation of the Lord Jesus in His character as Antitype and Fulfilment of the holocaust of the Levitical atonement. Even as the chief animal victim of the old covenant, the symbolical bearer of the sins of Israel, was carried "outside the camp" to be consumed, so our Victim was led "outside the gate" of the city to His death, that there, by His blood-shedding, by Hi