LECTURE VII. ἱερεὺς εἰς τὸ διηνεκές. I. LET US GO ON TO PERFECTION.' 2. MORAL PERFECTION REQUIRES PRIESTHOOD. 3. AN APOSTOLATE FROM GOD WOULD SUPPLY THIS. 4. HOW CHRIST'S PRIESTHOOD SECURES OUR PERFECTION. OUTLINE. I. Going on to Perfection.' Approaching withdrawal of the Apostles-(not of the Apostolate). 219 Occasion of his having withheld some teaching in his Epistles. It is referred to in all the Epistles. The fact itself needs to be dwelt on. And especially in that to the Hebrews; and why. 219 220 220 221 Extent of conformity to parts of Judaism. A practical comment on the work of the Apostolate. The Gospel the voice of the Son. Greater danger of resisting its message. 225 226 226 227 227 228 229 The Aaronic ministry had not effectually touched moral evil : The old priesthood testified to a human need. What S. Paul meant by Priesthood: Its Ethical foundations; Equally broad in the old covenant and the new. It is after the order of Melchisedec.' Points of the parallel of Christ's Priesthood with Melchisedec's; As to its origin, its Apostolate, and continuance in the Incarnation. Mystery of Atonement. III. How the Priesthood of Christ reaches us now. 232 232 233 233 234 236 236 237 238 238 240 240 241 In what sense Priesthood and Worship are later perfections,' LECTURE VII. LET US GO ON TO PERFECTION.' The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.-HEBREWS Vii. 21. I. THE splendours of the Old Covenant between God and Israel were about to set for ever in blood and darkness. But that generation might not pass away ' until the Kingdom of God should come with power' hitherto withheld; and the preparations were now advancing to their completion. I. 'Going on to perfec tion.' s. Matt. xxviii. 20. The men who had seen the Lord, the gifted-ones Approaching withwho had lived in the Pentecost, had done their own drawal of the Apowork, and other instruments of the heavenly grace stles; (not of the Apowere ready. Apostle after Apostle-but not the f stolate). Apostolate, or its traditions,-had been withdrawn from the scene. 'James the brother of John' was the first to depart, and the other James,' who had presided at Jerusalem, was probably among the lastb; while the rest, little known to each other after the dispersion to their remote and separate spheres of toil for Christ, would soon be all called away, when a Lect. I. p. 31. b Lect. VI. p. 185. • Eusebius, H. E. iii. 11, mentions another report as to surviving Apostles after the fall of Jerusalem; but it clashes, as Valesius observes, with his own statement in the Chronicon. Acts xii. 2. each in his perhaps lonely mission had done his unrecorded work, all doubtless meeting again with surprise and joy beyond the horizon of time, in that Presence which is better than the life itself.' S. Paul's work was not yet ended. His heart was ready' indeed, and he was more than willing to depart; yet he was Divinely permitted to forecast a possible future for his own earthly ministry, when martyrdom however was near, and he knew it not. He felt that he was charged to deliver some final to a final message to the Churches, especially to his own. countrymen who had always been so reluctant to receive his personal ministry; for he had yet to complete his teaching to them, if not to the Gentiles, if it were not to remain indeed painfully unfinished, Duty of S. Paul as message to the Churches, The social earthquake had begun all around him. But there was something more, in that destruction coming on Jerusalem, than a moral ruin. It was the abrupt conclusion of a long series of Divine revelations, each with its place and meaning in the plans especially of Heaven; and the Apostle could not behold it to Judaism. without having his whole soul stirred with deep in reference emotion. His own relations with the departing covenant had been so mysterious, that he might well muse with amazement, while step by step the Spirit led him in his Apostolate for Christ, separating him gradually, and with so much mercy, from those of whom he yet had been able to speak, just before Acts xxvi. his Roman imprisonment, as 'our twelve tribes instantly worshipping God day and night.' 7. λατρεύον. He knew that in the destruction which was now his having some teach his letters sweeping on, no truth that had ever been revealed could perish. The faith which he had preached had its place, as he had fully set forth, in the reason of things and in the high designs of Eternal Providence. The Gospel recognized, not superficially but essentially, all that was sacred in the past. In his letters Occasion of to the Churches of mingled Jews and Gentiles the withheld Apostle had explained in part the character and aim ing from of the Old Dispensation and its relation to the New; to the but the unreadiness of believers, and the tarrying of expected events, had restrained much which he had desired to teach openly to all. To the elders of Ephesus, and probably to presiding rulers in all the Churches he had founded, he had not shunned to declare all the counsel of God;' and from none had he ever kept back anything that was profitable to them;' but he was jealous as to that which he committed to writing, as if doubting the hands Churches. Acts xx. 20, 27; 2 5. Thess. ii. into which things hard to be understood' might 2 S. Pet. fall, and be wrested to their destruction.' iii. 16. itself needs on. It is right that the fact itself should now be The fact steadily looked at once more, that S. Paul's writings to be dwelt opened the truth gradually and often very guardedly, how fully so ever he may have imparted orally to the teachers of the Gentile Christians the 'unsearchable riches of Christ.' In the Judæan Churches his oral teaching had little place. We need not suppose that his letters were designed by him as a systematic unfolding of truth part by part, (though he tells us that oμeps this had always been the Divine method)—but we Tpóws. see that, historically, they were very much of this καὶ πολυ |