the
expression "We have no _right_ to eat" is not the appropriate one. The
writer would surely have said, "of which we _cannot_ eat." Besides, this
view misses the connection between the ninth and tenth verses. To say
that Christ's death procured spiritual blessings and that we do not eat
His body after a carnal manner does not affect the question concerning
meats, unless the doctrine concerning meats includes the notion that
they are themselves an atoning sacrifice. Such was the doctrine of the
Essenes. The argument of the Apostle is good and forcible if it means
that Christ's atonement is Christ's alone. We share not in its
sacredness, though we partake of its blessings. It resembles the
sin-offering on the day of atonement, as well as the paschal lamb.

But it was not enough that the slain beasts should be burned without the
camp. Their blood also must be brought into the holiest place. The
former rite signified that the slain beast bore the sin of the people,
the latter that the people themselves were sanctified. Similarly Jesus
suffered without the gate of Jerusalem, in reproach and ignominy, as the
Sin-bearer, and also entered into the true holiest place, in order to
sanctify His people through His own blood.

We must not press the analogy. The author sees a quaint but touching
resemblance between the burning of the slain beasts outside the camp and
the crucifying of Jesus on Golgotha outside the city. The point of
resemblance is in the ignominy symbolized in the one and in the other.
Here too the writer finds the practical use of what he has said. Though
the atonement of the Cross is Christ's, and cannot be shared in by
others, the reproach of that atoning death can. The thought leads the
Apostle away from the divers strange doctrines of the Essenes, and
brings him back to the main idea of the Epistle, which is to induce his
readers to hold no more dalliance with Judaism, but to break away from
it finally and for ever. "Let us come out," he says. The word recalls
St. Paul's exhortation to the Christians of Corinth "to come out from
among them, to be separate, and not to touch the unclean thing. For what
concord can there be between Christ and Belial, between a believer and
an unbeliever, between the sanctuary of God and idols?"[411] Our author
tells the Hebrew Christians that on earth they have nothing better than
reproach to expect. Quit, therefore, the camp of Judaism. Live, so to
speak, in the desert. (He spe