Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews | Page 3

unique and all-wonderful personal
achievement. To that attitude of thought it recurs again and again in its
later stages. In one way or another it is always bidding us look up from
even the greatest related subjects and "consider HIM."
Am I not right in saying that here is a message straight to the restless
heart of our time, and not least to the special conditions of Christian life
just now in our well-beloved Church? We must, of course we must,
think about a hundred problems presented by the circumference of the
life of the Christian and the life of the Church. At all times such
problems, asking for attention and solution, emerge to every thoughtful
disciple's sight. In our own time they seem to multiply upon one
another with an importunate demand--problems doctrinal, ritual,
governmental, social; the strife of principles and tendencies within the
Church; all that is involved in the relations between the Church and the
State, and again between the Church and the world, that is to say,
human life indifferent or opposed to the living Christian creed and the
spiritual Christian rule.

Well, for these very reasons let us make here first this brief appeal,
prompted by the opening paragraphs of the great Epistle. If you would
deal aright with the circumference, earnest Christian of the English
Church, live at the Centre. "Dwell deep." From the Church come back
evermore to Jesus Christ, that from Jesus Christ you may the better go
back to the Church, bearing the peace and the power of the Lord
Himself upon you.
There is nothing that can serve as a substitute for this. The
"consideration" of our blessed Redeemer and King is not merely good
for us; it is vital. To "behold His glory," deliberately, with worship,
with worshipping love, and seen by direct attention to the mirror of His
Word, can and must secure for us blessings which we shall otherwise
infallibly lose. This, and this alone, amidst the strife of tongues and all
the perplexities of life, can develope in us at once the humblest
reverence and the noblest liberty, convictions firm to resist a whole
world in opposition, yet the meekness and the fear which utterly
exclude injustice, untruth, hardness, or the bitter word. For us if for any,
for us now if ever, this first great message of the Epistle meets a vital
need; "CONSIDER HIM."
CHAPTER II
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
His Name as His disciples. We are expressly called here to do what the
first two chapters implied that we must do--to "consider Him" (ver. 1),
to bend upon His Person, character, and work the attention of the whole

heart and mind. We are pointed to His holy fidelity to His mission (ver.
2) in words which equally remind us of His subordination to the
Father's will and of His absolute authority as the Father's perfect
Representative. We are reminded (ver. 3) of that magnificent other side
of His position, that He acts and administers in "the house of God" not
as a servant but as the Father's "own SON (ver. 6) that serveth Him."
Nay, such is He that the "house" in which He does His filial service is a
building which He Himself has reared (ver. 3); He is its Architect and
its Constructor in a sense in which none could be who is not Divine.
Yes, He is no less than God (ver. 4); God Filial, God so conditioned
that He is also the faithful Sent-One of the Father, but none the less
GOD. We saw Him already in the first chapter (ver. 10), placed before
us in His majesty as the Originator of the material Universe, to whom
the starry skies are but His robe, to be put on and put off in season.
Here He is the doer of a yet more wonderful achievement; He is the
Builder of the Church of the Faithful. For the "house" which He thus
built is nothing else than "we" (ver, 6), we who by faith have entered
into the structure of the "living stones" (see 1 Pet. ii. 5), and who, by
"the confidence and the rejoicing of our hope," abide within it.
Thus the blessed Lord is before us here again, filling our sphere of
thought and