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be a peculiar people,' 'holy to the Lord,' while limiting their freedom to evil enlarged their power for good. And this is the nature of all Divinely conferred privilege: it opens a more 'glorious liberty of the sons of God,' but is viewed by the world without as a bondage.'

The less restrained moral agent having once gone wrong, with less and less religion freely wanders at large, tends to a permanent failure of all good, and is ultimately fit for destruction,' becoming the object of moral displeasure, a vessel of wrath.' The privileged and gifted would however be more guilty if self-surrendered to evil. You only have I known,' saith the Lord, therefore will I punish you for your sins.'

We are told that one reason for this choosing of Israel from among the nations was to prepare the way of the Lord.' 'Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures' (S. James i. 1, 18). This is in harmony with what has now been said. In giving distinct positions to distinct classes of moral agents, regard was had to the moral government of all, and the securing finally the probation of those who are responsible. The grace which the Supreme chooses to give to some is never a substitute for their moral goodness, but a higher power for righteousness, and a sheltered sphere for some ulterior end amidst distinct influences of the Divine. Such is Election' in its relation to the Moral System-a bond between good in the creature and good in the Creator='Grace' from God. It was 'first of the Jews,' but afterwards not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles,' the Kλŋtoì (Rom. ix. 24; comp. S. Matt. xxii. 14).

NOTE H.

Ecce Homo,' and Enthusiasm of Humanity.'

THE book which so lately stirred the surface of the religious world among us, the Ecce Homo, claimed for the Gospel an exclusively ethical object, and asserted so as to startle most Christians an intensely human mission for our Blessed Lord. The surprise that was excited arose far more from the style than

the substance of the work, and more too from what it omitted than what it said. Comparatively little attention was attracted to the critique on Renan published shortly before in Paris, with the same title Ecce Homo, by M. de St. Semmera, though the style and terminology so strikingly resembled the English book. We have in M. de St. Semmera the same description of the position of the Baptist, and our Lord's inheriting his role' as preacher of the 'kingdom to come;' the same idea of a 'religion of humanity,' and the 'conscience of man in direct relation with the Divine Father;' the same prominence of ȧyánη as superior to all religious practices; the same marking of the 'prodigious personality of Jesus;' and the same statement that as Socrates founded philosophy, and Aristotle science, so Jesus a new religion;' and so on. But Parisian society was not ready for this, and in some sort England was.

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The most remarkable feature however of the English work is its teaching that Christ's distinct object was to form a Society 'to foster morality;' unhappily it says, 'for no other purpose,' which seemed to most readers to clash altogether with the New Creation' of the future into which as Christians we have been baptized. But the point to which we are most to direct notice is the testimony it gives to the great human need which the Apostle to the Hebrews expresses as a 'High Priesthood,'—a lofty manhood 'taken from among men' to guide and aid us in things Divine. If, according to this eloquent writer, the summum bonum of the Gospel was 'Virtue existing in a Polity,' the 'Great Teacher' claimed for Himself a supreme place in that polity, and required in every member of it an individual enthusiasm for the good of the whole '—an enthusiasm which should in some sense supersede the necessity of any code of laws.

George Fox and his followers had said the same two centuries before. Mr. Hancock, the recent essayist on Quakerism, in much the same terms declares 'pure enthusiasm' to be the indwelling of the Spirit of God, and calls it the ideal motive of Quaker conduct. Making all allowance for this painful kind of phraseology, the Christian instructed by the Church feels that such teaching stands on the edge of the great truths and facts which he inherits.

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Barclay's Apology for the Quakers contains, in a clear and somewhat orderly form, the ethical conceptions briefly expressed by Ecce Homo-(so much so, that Richard Baxter thought Popery, which has so much moral similarity to it in some points, must be at work in Quakerism; and Barclay indeed had been a Roman Catholic before he became a Quaker.) This 'enthusiasm of humanity,' for which the best and most earnest of such teachers so loudly call, is imperfectly, but really, what S. Paul represented to the Hebrews in his loftier spirit, and truly that which being our need, the Church possesses, in her Heavenly way. All that we have learned from the Apostle as to the Societies of Purity,' and the 'Supernatural life' they aimed to live, completes and responds to the yearnings of the moral nature in its best estate. If Perfection' should be our aim, the Priesthood of our Lord is found to be that which alone 'leads the sons of God to glory.'

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Unhappily Ecce Homo in England became almost necessarily a battlefield of opinion, in consequence of its professedly postponing theological considerations. The orthodox naturally looked on it as an attempt to supersede the Christianity of the creeds by ideal moralism; and so it was soon denounced in other communities as well as our own. The Pope thought it necessary to place the work in the Index.' But it is for all this a great testimony against that notional system which so long had pervaded large sections of the religious world; and thou art not far from the kingdom of God' is the chastened feeling with which as Churchmen we turn its pages. The Quaker theology, though not the ethics, seems, at the distant view of it, to be most remote from the religion of the Creeds and Sacraments; but when men have reached the extremest point, there is a reaction.

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It was a mistake in the Ecce Homo to separate the moral and the theological, since both are true; and the great questions of moral being are closely involved in the just relations between the human and the Divine.

NOTE I.

τελείωσις.

THE following interesting hints are from the Rev. N. Liberty
(King's Coll., London) :—

The phrase used in the Old Testament to denote consecration
to the priestly office is to fill the hand.'

'Nata locutio inde, quod tradendo certas partes sacrificiorum
in manus sacerdotum immitterentur solenniter in possessionem
muneris sacrificandi, in eoque plenissime confirmarentur.' (J.
Buxtorf.)

The rite referred to is described in Exod. xxix. 24, Lev.
viii. 27.

The expression is represented in the LXX by the words
πλýlew or èμñλý¤ew τǹv xeîpa, as in Ezek. xliii. 26; Exod. xxviii.
41;—πληρoûν Tǹv xeîpa, Exod. xxxii. 29; Judges xvii. 5, 12;
1 Kings xiii. 33; 2 Chron. xiii. 9, xxix. 31;—tedeiûv tùv xeîpa,
Exod. xxix. 9, 33, 35; Lev. viii. 33, xvi. 32; Num. iii. 3; or by
the single word τελειοῦν, Lev. xxi. 10,

DP (consecration) is reλelwots in every instance.

Our Saviour Christ is εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τετελειωμένος (Hel. vii.
28). His priestly hand being filled with a sacrifice of eternal
efficacy, even His own slain humanity (Rev. v. 6; see also S. Luke
xiii. 32).

He so gives His Body and His Blood to us, that by the hands
of the ministers of His Covenant He blesses and sanctifies (S. John
xvii. 18, 20). And thus their hands too are filled continually'
for the sacerdotal functions of His Church; for by one offering
τετελείωκεν εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους (Heb. x. 14.)

It is interesting to observe that the significant rite above
mentioned passed on also into the Christian ceremonial; kai
μετὰ τὴν προσευχὴν εἷς τῶν ἐπισκόπων αναφέρετο τὴν θυσίαν ἐπὶ
Twν Xεɩрŵv тоû xεLротоvηlévтоs (Const. Apost. viii. 5, in the con-
secration of a Bishop).

The same thing is done in the ordering of a Priest according
to the Constantinopolitan rite.

Cotelerius seems to refer to the Concelebration' of the

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Western Pontificals, as being something of this kind. Possibly a trace of it appears in the traditio instrumentorum Eucharistiæ.'-N. L.

The great difficulty of rendering the continuous sense of some parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the manifold imperfections of the present attempt, naturally lead to the welcoming of such assistance as the writer of these thoughtful references has given. Some step has been made, it is hoped, towards better exegesis ; and others may advance more distinctly in determining the difficult meaning of a Greek version, the original Hebrew of which is not to be had.

It has been suggested, that even in the Epistle which preceded that to the Hebrews there are phrases which a Jewish Church, like Philippi, would interpret sacrificially, the Apostle seeming to hover over the sacred feeling in such words as ἐναρξάμενος and ἐπιτελέσει (Philip. i. 6), and σπένδομαι ἐπὶ τῇ θυσίᾳ καὶ λειτουργία κ.τ.λ. (Philip. ii. 17).

See also the frequently-noted Rom. xv. 16.

NOTE J.

ὁ Θεὸς Σωτήρ.

In the later writings of S. Paul, the Deity of Christ is very prominently connected with the fact of our salvation by Him. The word 'Saviour' was indeed a usual title of the Divine Being (S. Luke i. 47, 68, 69), and it is very significant that it is not easy at times to say whether the title God our Saviour' applies to the Divine Father or to the Son. Thus in the Epistle to Titus it seems to refer (i. 3, ii. 13, iii. 6) to the Second Person of the Divine Trinity; and in the First Epistle to Timothy (i. 1, ii. 3, 5, iv. 10, &c.) it may include both the Father and the Son. Not that this was peculiar to S. Paul, as a reference to S. Jude i. 25 will show; but it is most prevalent in him, and in writing to the Hebrews the tone strikes. us throughout. The Divine dignity of the Son is not less dwelt on than His human Priesthood.

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