essage 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 contemplation. It is here just as it is in the Epistle to
the Colossians. There, as here, errors and confusions in the Church are
in view--a subtle theosophy and also a retrograde ceremonialism,
probably both amalgamating into one dangerous total. And St.