worship, and of the belief that God responds, has not been to dull the
energies of man, but to inspire him with the self-respect befitting a
confidant of deity, and to brace him for labours worthy of one who
draws, from the sense of Divine favour, the hope of an infinite advance.

And yet, side by side with this spiritual gravitation, there has always
been recoil and dread, such as was expressed when Moses hid his face
because he was afraid to look upon God.

Now, it is not this apprehension, taken alone, which proves man to be a
fallen creature: it is the combination of the dread of God with the
desire of Him. Why should we shrink from our supreme Good, except as a
sick man turns away from his natural food? He is in an unnatural and
morbid state of body, and we of soul.

Thus divided between fear and attraction, man has fallen upon the device
of commissioning some one to represent him before God. The priest on
earth has come by the same road with so many other mediators--angel and
demigod, saint and virgin.

At first it has been the secular chief of the family, tribe or nation,
who has seemed least unworthy to negotiate as well with heaven as with
centres of interest upon earth. But by degrees the duty has everywhere
been transferred into professional hands, patriarch and king recoiling,
feeling the inconsistency of his earthly duties with these sacred ones,
finding his hands to be too soiled and his heart too heavily weighted
with sin for the tremendous Presence into which the family or the tribe
would press him. And yet the union of the two functions might be the
ideal; and the sigh of all truly enlightened hearts might be for a
priest sitting upon his throne, a priest after the order of Melchizedek.
But thus it came to pass that an official, a clique, perhaps a family,
was chosen from among men in things pertaining to God, and the
institution of the priesthood was perfected.

Now, this is the very process which is recognised in Scripture; for
these two conflicting forces were altogether sound and right. Man ought
to desire God, for Whom he was created, and Whose voice in the garden
was once so welcome: but also he ought to shrink back from Him, afraid
now, because he is conscious of his own nakedness, because he has eaten
of the forbidden fruit.

Accordingly, as the nation is led out from Egypt, we find that its
intercourse with heaven is at once real and indirect. The leader is
virtually the priest as well,