forward to another visit to this great gallery of "the portraits of
the family of God" with a pleasure as natural as it is reverent and
believing. True to our plan in these expositions, however, we shall not
attempt to comment upon it in the least degree fully or in detail. Our
aim will be rather to collect and focus together some main elements of
its teaching, particularly in regard of their applicability to our own
days.

The first question suggested as we read is, what is the connexion of the
chapter? Why does the Writer spend all this wealth of example and
application upon the one word Faith?

The reason is not far to seek. The tenth chapter closes with that word,
or rather with that truth: "My righteous man shall live by faith"; "we
are of them that have faith, unto the saving of the soul." And this
close is only the issue of a strain of previous teachings, going far
back towards the opening of the Epistle. "The evil heart of unbelief,"
of "unfaith," if the word may be used, is the theme of warning in iii.
12: "They could not enter in because of unbelief" (iii. 19). "The word
of hearing did not profit them" because of their lack of faith (iv. 2).
It is "we who have believed" who "enter into God's rest" (iv. 3).
Looking to our great High Priest and His finished work, we are to "draw
near with a true heart, in fulness of faith" (x. 22), for the
all-sufficient reason that such trust meets and appropriates eternal
truth: "He is faithful that promised" (x. 23).

These explicit occasional _mentions_ of faith are, however, as we might
expect, only a part of the phenomenon of the great place which _the
idea_ of faith holds in the Epistle. When we come to reflect upon it,
the precise position of the Hebrew Christians was that of men seriously,
even tremendously, tempted to walk by sight, not by faith. The Gospel
called them to venture their all, for time and eternity, upon an
invisible Person, an invisible order, a mediation carried on above the
skies, a presentation of sacrifice made in a temple infinitely other
than that of Mount Moriah, and a kingdom which, as to all outward
appearance, belonged to a future quite isolated from the present. On the
other hand, so they were told by their friends, and so it was perfectly
natural to them to think, the vast visible institutions of the Law were
the very truth of God for their salvation, and those institutions
appealed to them through every sense. Why should they forsake a cr