that wonderful Christ, that we shall
find the glow which can melt and overcome the cloud. We must put
ourselves continually in face of the revelation of this in the Word of
God. We must let that revelation so sink into the heart as to do its
self-verifying work there thoroughly, yet with a growth never to be
exhausted. We must "bear onwards" evermore "unto perfection"--in
"knowing Him." So we shall stand, and live, and love, and labour on.

CHAPTER IV

OUR GREAT MELCHIZEDEK

HEB. vii.

There is a symmetrical dignity all its own in the seventh chapter of the
Hebrews. I recollect listening, now many years ago, to a characteristic
exposition of it by the late beloved and venerated Edward Hoare, in a
well-known drawing-room at Cromer--a "Bible Reading" full alike of
mental stimulus and spiritual force. He remarked, among many other
things, that the chapter might be described as a sermon, divided under
three headings, on the text of Psalm cx. 4. This division and its
significance he proceeded to develope. The chapter opens with a
preamble, a statement of the unique phenomena which surround, in the
narrative of Genesis, the name and person of Melchizedek. Then, starting
from the presupposition, to whose truth the Lord Himself is so
abundantly a witness, that the Old Testament is alive everywhere with
intimations of the Christ, and remembering that in the Psalm in
question a mysterious import is explicitly assigned to Melchizedek, the
Writer proceeds to his discourse. Its theme is the primacy of the
priesthood embodied in Melchizedek over that represented by Aaron, and
the bearing of this on the glory of Him who is proclaimed a priest for
ever after Melchizedek's order. This theme is presented under headings,
somewhat as follows. _First_ (verses 4-14), the one priesthood is
greater than the other _in order_. Abraham, bearing the whole Aaronic
hierarchy potentially within him, defers to Melchizedek as to his
greater. Hence, among other inferences, the sacred Personage who is a
priest for ever after Melchizedek's order, wholly independent of
Levitical limits, must dominate and must supersede the order of the sons
of Aaron with their inferior status and with their transitory lives.
_Secondly_ (verses 15-19), the one priesthood is greater than the other
in respect of _the finality_, the permanence, the everlastingness, of
the greater Priest and of His office. He is what He is "for ever, on the
scale of the power of in