A Fragment.
There is a divine wisdom' stamped on every page of the precious Word of God, which only requires divine light, and a heart subject to God, in order to its being perceived and enjoyed. But in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the rays of this wisdom are concentrated, making the ever-interesting subjects on which it treats, glow with its heavenly brightness.
Sacrifice, priesthood, and religious ordinances, are elements for which there appears to be a natural affinity in the human mind, almost independently of the adventitious circumstances of rudeness or intellectual culture—the possession of a divine revelation, or the glimmerings of traditional notices of truth—and the immense practical importance of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in such a day as this, is found in its object being to define the character of these elements, to show their necessity and bearing in regard to a sinner's intercourse and relationship with God; and above all, to give them their just place and force according to the light of the gospel of the grace of God.
Everything in the shape of a divinely-appointed ordinance that ever had a claim upon the conscience and the soul, is in this epistle taken up, and the limit of its continuance is marked, and the manner of its abrogation indicated with a wisdom that proclaims itself to be divine.
It is shown especially, that in the original constitution of these ordinances, whether relating to sacrifice or priesthood, or ritual service, no latitude was allowed to the mind or thoughts of man. " For see (said He to Moses) that thou make all things according to the pattern showed thee in the mount." But, in the next place, it is as plainly shown that, in their original constitution, they were but the "shadows of good things to come," which had their verification in the perfected work and offices of the Lord Jesus Christ; and not, as many imagine, by an arrangement of more spiritual ordinances, but in these ordinances having their whole meaning, and harmony, and force, in the person, and work, and present position, and offices of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, when it is considered that all which is ordinarily called religion, in these days is but an imperfect, humanly-devised compound of these ordinances, it will easily be conceived how unspeakable is the importance of a right understanding of this epistle, that men may not blindly imagine they are serving God by attending to what are called " meats, and drinks, and divers ordinances, imposed until the times of reformation"; and in another Scripture, called even "beggarly elements" by the Holy Ghost.
The express object of this divine treatise is to take up the whole means of God's own appointment, by which man was to have to do with God, and to show that in their abrogation the believer is brought, through the very means of their putting away, into the nearest possible connection with God, and into an entire dissociation from the world in which these ordinances had their place; so that now a believer's position is (toward God) " boldness by the blood of Jesus to enter into the holiest of all," and (toward the world, and all the religion of the world) "going without the camp, bearing Christ's reproach." J. C.