upon us. Sanctification comes through the offering of the body of Christ; we are made holy by union with His Body through the Spirit: "Our sinful bodies are made clean by His Body."

Another contrast is now stated. The Jewish High Priest stands ministering, and repeating the same sacrifices, daily, But Christ offered One Sacrifice which should last for ever, and then sat down on the Throne of His Kingdom, in token that His Work was done. (The words "for ever" qualify "offered," and not "sat down.") There is a most admirable and exhaustive note on this passage against the Romish heresy of "the Sacrifice of the Mass" in Dr, Wordsworth's Greek Testament.

From henceforth, &c.] Quotation from Ps. cx. 1.

For by One offering, &c.] Therefore the sacrifice needs not to be renewed. Them that are being sanctified.] The process is continually going on in the Christian. We do not become holy at once, but make progress in holiness, grow in grace; and the offering of Christ is the continual means by which we do so. Next is quoted the witness of the Holy Ghost by the mouth of His Prophet (Jer. xxxi. 33, 34), that Christ has inaugurated a new covenant. (The word translated "whereof" is not in the best texts, which have "And" or 'Moreover.") For after that he had said, This is, &c.,-then he adds, And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. The words "then he adds" must be inserted to complete the sentence (to speak in grammatical language, "and their sins, &c.," forms the apodosis of the sentence). The new covenant then, as appears from these words, is based upon the forgiveness of sins. Consequently there can be no more offering for sin, seeing that it is already forgiven.

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Then we have words of exhortation founded upon our belief in the completion of the sacrifice.

Having therefore (in consequence of the covenant of forgiveness which God has given) boldness to enter the holiest place (i. e. into the very presence of God) by the blood of Jesus, because He has made propitiation by His Blood, by a new and and living way (not the old and dead ceremony of entering through the Temple vail on the Atonement-Day), which He consecrated for us. The Greek word for "consecrated" contains two ideas," initiated" and "consecrated." It is the same word as that used for the dedication of the Temple. This vail was His Flesh, His Mortal Nature. Through that mortal state He passed, as through the vail, into the highest glory.

And having a Great Priest over the house of God, over the Church, the One Communion and fellowship, in Earth and Heaven; let us draw near with a true heart, without hypocrisy or faltering allegiance to Christ, but in full assurance of faith, without any doubt of God's good will to us; having our hearts, as the worshippers under the Law their bodies, sprinkled from an evil conscience, a conscience polluted with sin, and our bodies washed with pure water, namely, of Baptism (cf. Eph. v. 26; Tit. iii. 5). Baptism is a symbol and sacrament to us of the spiritual cleansing of the Holy Ghost.

After the exhortation to Faith comes the exhortation to Hope,-Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for He (i. e. God) is faithful Who promised. And this is followed by the exhortation to Love. Let us consider one another, think of one another's griefs, anxieties, needs; in order to provoke unto love and good works, that is, to excite ourselves to good works.

1 in

Not forsaking, &c.] Negligence in Divine worship seems to have arisen in the Hebrew Church; an evil which is the parent of so many other evils. If God be neglected in public worship, He will be also in private. In this case it probably lay at the root of the unbelief and apostacy against which the writer has been so strenuously exhorting.

And so much the more, &c.] The approaching day, as has already been said (Introduction, p. 37), was the downfall of the Jewish Church. But it applies to us as fully as to the Hebrews. We also are directed to meet together, to exhort one another by word or deed, to watch for the signs of the times. The day is approaching to all,-the day of death. Blessed is that servant whom His Lord shall find watching. And the light by which we can look forward to see His coming streams down from the Cross. By this we are provoked to faith, and hope, and love, in preparation for the approaching day.

IT

EASTER EVEN.

1 St. Pet. iii. 17-22.

is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing, than for evildoing. For Christ also [hath] once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah,

while the ark was a preparing; wherein
few, that is, eight souls, were saved by
water. The like figure whereunto, even
baptism, doth also now save us, (not the
putting away the filth of the flesh, but the
answer 2 of a good conscience towards God,) 2 seel
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: who
is gone into heaven, and is on the right
hand of God, angels and authorities and
powers being made subject unto him.

MEN often say, when they suffer unkind treatment, "I should not feel it so much if I deserved it. It is the injustice which wounds me most." St. Peter meets this complaint in the passage before us (as also in the Epistle for the Second Sunday after Easter):-"It is better for you," he says, "if the will of God be so, that you should suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing." It is not well for a man to seek martyrdom, to invite injury; but if God see fit to bring it to you, it is a blessing (cf. Matt. v. 11). "Go forth in faith and love. If the Cross come, take it; if not, do not seek it" (Luther, quoted by Alford).

He proves what he has said by the greatest of all instances:--" Christ suffered, being righteous, and thereby won His Kingdom." A just One died for men unjust, to set them an example of meekness, patience, obedience, selfsacrifice, and so to bring them near God.

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The words "He suffered once for sins," seem to imply on the Apostle's part 'only once." An encouragement to Christians:-"His sufferings are past and gone, the glory is now come."

Put to death in the flesh, in the body; but quickened in the Spirit.] As His flesh was the means by which He was able to suffer death, so His Spirit was the means by which life came back to Him. "The rolling of the stone to

the grave," says Leighton, "was as if they had rolled it toward the East in the night to stop the rising of the sun next morning."

The quickening of Christ in His Spirit is the 'ground of hope to all who believe in Him. "I am the Resurrection and the Life," said the Lord; and again and again He repeated, "I will raise them (the believers) up at the last day."

By which also, i. e. by which Spirit, He went, &c.] The same Spirit, in the power of which He rose from the dead, did another work, preaching to the Spirits in prison. Many volumes have been written to discuss the meaning of these words. Many commentators take them to refer to the work of Christ in the interval between His Death and Resurrection, what is called in our Creed "His descent into Hell." Others refer them to the preaching of Noah. Thus, Augustine:-"6 -"The Spirits in prison are those unbelievers who lived in the time of Noah, whose spirits were shut up in the flesh and in the darkness of ignorance, as in a prison. Christ preached to them, not indeed in the flesh, seeing that he was not yet incarnate, but in the Spirit, by the mouth of Noah." Leighton also inclines to this view, though he gives another as possible, namely, that it refers to Christ's preaching by His Apostles after His resurrection (cf. Eph. ii. 17; Luke x. 16).

It seems better to leave the explanation in doubt, not forgetting that the inference to be derived from the passage is, that Christ is Lord of Heaven, and Earth, and things under the Earth; that there is no place, and no state, of which He is not the King (cf. the first three stanzas of the poem on this day in the Christian Year').

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"In the ark which Noah prepared," the Apostle goes on to say, a few, namely, eight persons, were saved through water." They passed through it, and suffered no hurt.

This leads him on to the comparison contained in the verse that follows. Even as the family of Noah floated safely in the ark, above the angry waves and storms of death, so Christians are baptized into Christ's Death, and rise unto newness of life by the power of His Resurrection. The Flood was a thing of death, yet out of it Noah found life; Christ died that he might rise again in the power of an endless life; we are buried with Christ by Baptism, that we may receive a new birth unto righteousness.

He describes the nature of Baptism. It is not the putting away the filth of the flesh, as the unavailing Jewish washings were: the virtue of the rite does not lie in the outward form, for that is only an accident, a symbol of an inward grace; but it is the seeking of a good conscience after God. This is the signi

ficance of Christian Baptism. He who undergoes it, seeks, either by himself or by his sureties, to become the child of God, a soldier of Christ. The watersign is a witness of the fact that Christ has redeemed him; his submission to it is a witness that he embraces the redemption. Thus it is that the external washing is nothing in itself, but is a token that he who is so washed is seeking after God.

By the resurrection of Jesus Christ.] The words are to be joined with save us. It is the Resurrection only which makes the Baptism of power to save (cf. Rom. vi. 5).

The concluding words speak of Christ's exaltation. They have a holy and solemn significance to us at the close of the Passion Week. The sufferings

of Christ, and of all who follow in His steps, lead to the final victory,—glorious far beyond the imagination to conceive. So Lent ends, and the key-note is struck of the coming festival.

THE Judaizing teachers talked much to the Colossians about raising their minds to things on high, about not thinking of fleshly things. St. Paul adopts their phrases, and shows how the mind might be raised:—If ye then be risen with Christ; that is the first necessity,—to have a share in Christ's resurrection, to be united with Him by baptism into death, to hold fast to Him continually. We have no power of ourselves, all our strength is union with Him. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Your home is above; for Christ is there, sitting on the right hand of God." This is St. Paul's idea of heaven always, the place where Christ is. "Seek then," he would say, “to realize the blessedness of your state, set your affections on things above, fix your thoughts on the home which Christ has prepared for you; this will wean you from the earth and from visible things." Then come some very remarkable and wonderful words,-For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Literally it is, "for ye died, and your life was hidden," &c. Thus, in the second lesson for the morning it is said, "We were buried with Christ by baptism into death." Baptism is a condition and a sign of union with Christ. An adult who receives baptism in sincerity, does so because he desires this union, and God gives it. The baptized infant receives a pledge of God's favour, a promise that God will grant to him grace as he shall need it. Seeing then that those who are baptized are so united to Christ, they die with Christ; they are united with Him in His death; they share in His sacrifice, offering their souls and bodies to God through Him. And the means of union is the Holy Spirit, which He has shed abroad in their hearts.

When this our union with Christ took place, our life became hidden with Christ in God. We were baptized into His death, therefore we became partakers of His Resurrection, of His Life. He ascended into Heaven, that we who are united with Him might "also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually dwell" (Collect for Ascension Day). Our home, happiness, joy, are with Him: they are put away so that we may not lose them; hidden with Christ in God,

When Christ, who is our Life, shall appear [rather be made manifest], then shall ye also be made manifest with Him in glory. In this world the Christian oftentimes is unnoticed, for his good deeds are done to God, not to man; but the day shall come which shall make all things manifest-the day of the manifestation, the unveiling of Christ. Then His people shall be manifested with Him; He will confess them before angels and men.

Having thus stated the glorious doctrine of our union with Christ and future glorification with Him, the Apostle turns, as is always his custom, to the practical result. "When St. Paul is most rapturous, he is always most practical," it has well been said. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth. Seeing that you have a life laid up for you in heaven, hidden away so that you may not be robbed of it, do not of your own free will reject it. Do not prefer the poor sinful life of this world: kill all its corrupt affections,-self-indulgence, passion, pride. By inordinate affection seems to be meant any excess of feeling, whether of hatred or love, fear or sorrow; anything which hides God from our sight. Evil concupiscence is evil desire of any kind. For which things' sake cometh the wrath of God. The holiness of God, yea! His very love burns, and must ever burn, against sin. In the which ye also walked sometime [i. e. formerly] when ye lived in them. Their whole course of life had been formerly one of alienation from God, therefore the separate acts of it were evil; the root was corrupt, therefore the fruit was all corrupt. But it is not so now. Christ is risen from the dead, and those who own Him for their Lord are risen with Him.

Here then we have the Church's lesson on this most high and holy commemoration, the Queen of all our feasts. And this lesson is,-We have died and risen with Christ, therefore let us seek evermore to continue united to Him; waiting for the redemption of our body.

MONDAY IN EASTER WEEK,
Acts x. 34-43.

PETER opened his mouth, and said, of a

truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ; (he is Lord of all;) that word (I say) ye know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil: for God was with him. And we are wit

nesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew, and hanged on a tree: Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he who was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness, that through his Name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.

Peter opened, &c.] The occasion of this speech of St. Peter is as follows:Cornelius, a devout Gentile, has been directed in a vision to send for Peter;