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CONTENTS

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 indissoluble life."[D] As such, He is the Priest not of an introductory and transient "commandment" but of that "better hope" which (ver. 19) has at last "made perfect" the purpose and the promise, fulfilled the intention of eternal mercy, and brought us, the people of this great covenant, absolutely nigh to God. Thirdly (verses 20, 21), this second aspect of the supremacy of the greater Priesthood is emphasized and solemnized by one further reference to Psalm cx. 4. There the Eternal, looking upon the mysterious Partner of His throne, is heard not to promise only but to vow, with an oath unalterable as Himself, that the Priesthood of "His Fellow" shall be everlasting. No such solemnity of affirmation attended Aaron's investiture. There is something greater here, and more immediately Divine. The "covenant" (ver. 22) committed to the administration of One thus sealed with the oath of Heaven must indeed be "better," and cannot but be final; the goal of the eternal purpose.

[D] κατὰ δύναμιν ζωῆς ἀκαταλύτου.

Then (verses 23–28) the discourse passes into what we may call its epilogue. The thought recurs to the sublime contrast between the pathetic numerousness of the successors of Aaron, "not suffered to continue by reason of death," and the singleness, the "unsuccessional" identity for ever, of the true Melchizedek, who abides eternally. And then, moving to its end, the argument glows and brightens into an "application" to the human heart. We have in Jesus (the Name has now already been pronounced, ver. 22) a Friend, an Intercessor, infinitely and for ever competent to save us, His true Israel. We have in Him a High Priest supreme in every attribute of holiness and power, and qualified for His work of intercession by that sacrifice of Himself which is at once solitary and all-sufficient. Behold then the contrast and the conclusion. To a great Dispensation, the preparatory, succeeds a greater, the greatest, the other's end and crown. To the "weak" mortal priesthood of the law, never warranted by the vow of God to abide always in possession, succeeds One who is Priest, and King, and Son, sealed for His office by the irrevocable vow, "consecrated for evermore."

Such on the whole, as I recall it, was the exposition of my venerable friend, in 1887. Each new reading of the chapter seems to me to bear out the substantial accuracy of it; indeed the symmetry and order of the chapter make it almost inevitable that some such line should be taken by the explanation. Thus then it lies before us. It is filled in all its parts with Jesus Christ, in His character of the true Melchizedek, our final, everlasting, perfect, supreme, Divine High Priest.

This simple treatise is not the place for critical discussions. I do not attempt a formal vindication of the mystical and Messianic reference of Psalm cx. All I can do here, and perhaps all I should do, is to affirm solemnly my belief in it, at the feet of Christ. I am perfectly aware that now, within the Church, and by men unquestionably Christian as well as learned, our Lord's own interpretation of that Psalm,[E] involving as it does His assertion of its Davidic authorship, is treated as quite open to criticism and disproof. One such scholar does not hesitate to say that, if the majority of modern experts are right as to the non-Davidic authorship, and he seems to think that they are, "our Lord's argument breaks down." All I would remark upon such utterances, coming from men who all the while sincerely adore Christ as their Lord and God, is that they must surely open the way towards conceptions of His whole teaching which make for the ruin of faith. For the question is not at all whether our Redeemer consented to submit to limits in His conscious human knowledge; I for one hold that He assuredly did so. It is whether He consented to that sort of limitation which alone, in respect of imperfection of knowledge, is the real peril of a teacher, and which is his fatal peril—the ignorance of his own ignorance, and a consequent claim to teach where he does not know. In human schools the betrayal of that sort of ignorance is a deathblow to confidence, not only in some special utterance, but in the teacher, for it strikes at his claim not to knowledge so much as to wisdom, to balance and insight of thought. I venture to say that recent drifts of speculation shew how rapidly the conception of a fallible Christ developes towards that of a wholly imperfect and untrustworthy Christ. And, looking again at the vast phenomenon of the Portrait in the Gospels, I hold that the line of thought which offers by very far the least difficulty, not to faith only but to reason, is that which relies absolutely on His affirmations wherever He is pleased actually to affirm.