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Expositor's Bible Commentary Hebrews 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, 14 CHAPTER V. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF RENEWAL. "Of Whom we have many things to say, and hard of interpretation, seeing ye are become dull of hearing. For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food. For every one that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness; for he is a babe. But solid food is for full-grown men, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil. Wherefore let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection; not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit. For as touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame. For the land which hath drunk the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receiveth blessing from God: but if it beareth thorns and thistles, it is rejected and nigh unto a curse; whose end is to be burned."-- Hebrews 5:11-14 ; Hebrews 6:1-8 (R.V.). In one of the greatest and most strange of human books the argument is sometimes said "to veil itself," and the sustained image of a man battling with the waves betrays the writer's hesitancy. When he has surmounted the first wave, he dreads the second. When he has escaped out of the second, he fears to take another step, lest the third wave may overwhelm him. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has proved that Christ is Priest-King. But before he starts anew, he warns his readers that whoever will venture on must be prepared to hear a hard saying, which he himself will find difficult to interpret and few will receive. Hitherto he has only shown that whatever of lasting worth was contained in the old covenant remains and is exalted in Christ. Even this truth is an advance on the mere rudiments of Christian doctrine. But what if he attempts to prove that the covenant which God made with their fathers has waxed old and must vanish away to make room for a new and better one? For his part, he is eager to ascend to these higher truths. He has yet much to teach about Christ in the power of His heavenly life.[83] But his readers are dull of hearing and inexperienced in the word of righteousness. The commentators are much divided and exercised on the question whether the Apostle means that the argument should advance or that his readers ought to make progress in spiritual character.[84] In a way he surely means both. What gives point to the whole section now to be considered is the connection between development of doctrine and a corresponding development of the moral nature. "For the time ye ought to be teachers."[85] They ought to have been teachers of the elementary truths, in consequence of having discovered the higher truths for themselves, under the guidance of God's Spirit. It ought to have been unnecessary for the Apostle to explain them. At this time the "teachers" in the Church had probably consolidated into a class formally set apart, but had not yet fallen to the second place, as compared with the "prophets," which they occupy in the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." A long time had elapsed since the Church of Jerusalem, with the Apostles and elders, had sat in judgment on the question submitted to their decision by such men as Peter, Barnabas, Paul, and James.[86] Since then the Hebrew Christians had degenerated, and now needed somebody--it mattered little who it might be,[87]--to teach them the alphabet[88] of Christian doctrine. Philo had already emphasised the distinction between the child in knowledge and the man of full age and mature judgment. St. Paul had said more than once that such a distinction holds among Christians. Many are carnal; some are spiritual. In his writings the difference is not an external one, nor is the line between the two classes broad and clear. The one shades into the other. But, though we may not be able to determine where the one begins and the other ends, both are tendencies, and move in opposite directions. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the distinction resembles the old doctrine of habit taught by Aristotle. Our organs of sense are trained by use to distinguish forms and colours. In like manner, there are inner organs of the spirit,[89] which distinguish good from evil, not by mathematical demonstration, but by long-continued exercise[90] in hating evil and in loving holiness. The growth of this spiritual sense is connected by our author with the power to understand the higher doctrine. He only who discerns, by force of spirited insight, what is good and what is evil, can also understand spiritual truths. The difference between good and evil is not identical with "the word of righteousness." But the moral elevation of character that clearly discerns the former is the condition of understanding also the latter. "Wherefore"--that is, inasmuch as solid food is for full-grown men--"let us have done[91] with the elementary doctrines, and permit ourselves to be borne strongly onwards[92] towards full growth of spiritual character."[93] The Apostle has just said that his readers needed some one to teach them the rudiments. We should have expected him, therefore, to take it in hand. But he reminds them that the defect lies deeper than intellectual error. The remedy is not mere teaching, but spiritual growth. Apart from moral progress there can be no revelation of new truths. Ever-recurring efforts to lay the foundation of individual piety will result only in an apprehension of what we may designate personal and subjective doctrines. The Apostle particularises. Repentance towards God and faith in God are the initial graces.[94] For without sorrow for sin and trust in God's mercy God's revelation of Himself in His Son will not be deemed worthy of all acceptation. If this is so, the doctrines suitable to the initial stage of the Christian life will be-- (1) the doctrine of baptisms and of laying on of hands, and (2) the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. Repentance and faith accept the gospel of forgiveness, which is symbolised in baptism, and of absolution, symbolised in the laying on of hands. Again, repentance and faith realise the future life and the final award; the beginning of piety reaching forth a hand, as runners do, as if to grasp the furthest goal before it touches the intermediate points. Yet every intermediate truth, when apprehended, throws new light on the soul's eschatology. In like manner civilization began with contemplation of the stars, long before it descended to chemical analysis, but at last it applies its chemistry to make discoveries in the stars. This, then, is the initial stage in the Christian character,--repentance and faith; and these are the initial doctrines, baptism, absolution, resurrection, and judgment. How may they be described? They all centre in the individual believer. They have all to do with the fact of his sin. One question, and one only, presses for an answer. It is, "What must I do to be saved?" One result, and one only, flows from the salvation obtained. It is the final acquittal of the sinner at the last day. God is known only as the merciful Saviour and the holy Judge. The whole of the believer's personal existence hovers in mid-air between two points: repentance at some moment in the past and judgment at the end of the world. Works are "dead," and the reason why is that they have no saving power. There is here no thought of life as a complete thing or as a series of possibilities that ever spring into actuality, no thought of the individual as being part of a greater whole. The Church exists for the sake of the believer, not the believer for the sake of the Church. Even Christ Himself is nothing more to him than his Saviour, Who by an atoning death paid his debt. The Apostle would rise to higher truths concerning Christ in the power of His heavenly life. This is the truth which the story of Melchizedek will teach to such as are sufficiently advanced in spirituality to understand its meaning. But, before he faces the rolling wave, the Apostle tells his readers why it is that, in reference to Christian doctrine, character is the necessary condition of intelligence. It is so for two reasons. First, the word spoken by God in His Son has for its primary object, not speculation, but "righteousness."[95] Theology is essentially a practical, not a merely theoretical, science. Its purpose is to create righteous men; that is, to produce a certain character. When produced, this lofty character is sustained by the truths of the Gospel as by a spiritual "food," milk or strong meat. Christianity is the art of holy living, and the art is mastered only as every other art is learned: by practice or experience. But experience will suggest rules, and rules will lead to principles. The art itself creates a faculty to transform it into a science. Religion will produce a theology. The doctrine will be understood only by the possessor of that goodness to which it has itself given birth. Second, the Apostle introduces the personal action of God into the question. Understanding of the higher truths is God's blessing on goodness,[96] and destruction of the faculty of spiritual discernment is His way of punishing moral depravity.[97] This is the general sense and purport of an extremely difficult passage. The threatened billow is still far away. But before it rolls over us, we seem to be already submerged under the waves. Our only hope lies in the Apostle's illustration of the earth that bears here thorns and there good grain. Expositors go quite astray when they explain the simile as if it were intended to describe the effect on moral character of rightly or wrongly using our faculty of knowledge. The meaning is the reverse. The Apostle is showing the effect of character on our power to understand truth. Neither soil is barren. Both lands drink in the rain that often comes upon them. But the fatness of the one field brings forth thorns and thistles, and this can only mean that the man's vigour of soul is itself an occasion of moral evil. The richness of the other land produces plants fit for use by men, who are the sole reason for its tillage.[98] This, again, must mean that, in the case of some men, God blesses that natural strength which itself is neither good nor evil, and it becomes a source of goodness. We come now to the result in each case. The soil that brings forth useful herbs has its share of the Creator's first blessing. What the blessing consists in we are not here told, and it is not necessary to pursue this side of the illustration further. But the other soil, which gives its natural strength to the production of noxious weeds, falls under the Creator's primal curse and is nigh unto burning. The point of the parable evidently is that God blesses the one, that God destroys the other. In both cases the Apostle recognises the Divine action, carrying into effect a Divine threat and a Divine promise. Let us see how the simile is applied. The terrible word "impossible" might indeed have been pronounced, with some qualification, over a man who had fallen under the power of evil habits. For God sets His seal to the verdict of our moral nature. To such a man the only escape is through the strait gate of repentance. But here we have much more than the ordinary evil habits of men, such as covetousness, hypocrisy, carnal imaginations, cruelty. The Apostle is thinking throughout of God's revelation in His Son. He refers to the righteous anger of God against those who persistently despise the Son. In the second chapter[99] he has asked how men who neglect the salvation spoken through the Lord can hope to shun God's anger. Here, he declares the same truth in a stronger form. How shall they escape His wrath who crucify afresh the Son and put Him to an open shame? Such men God will punish by hardening their hearts, so that they cannot even repent. The initial grace becomes impossible. The four parts of the simile and of the application correspond. First, drinking in the rain that often comes upon the land corresponds to being once enlightened, tasting of the heavenly gift, being made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasting the good word of God and the powers of the world to come. The rain descends on all the land and gives it its natural richness. The question whether the Apostle speaks of converted or unconverted men is entirely beside the purpose, and may safely be relegated to the limbo of misapplied interpretations. No doubt the controversy between Calvinists and Arminians concerning final perseverance and the possibility of a fall from a state of grace is itself vastly important. But the question whether the gifts mentioned are bestowed on an unconverted man is of no importance to the right apprehension of the Apostle's meaning. We must be forgiven for thinking he had it not in his mind. It is more to the purpose to remind ourselves that all these excellences are regarded by the Apostle as gifts of God, like the oft-descending rain, not as moral qualities in men. He mentions the one enlightenment produced by the one revelation of God in His Son. It may be compared to the opening of blind eyes or the startled waking of the soul by a great idea. To taste the heavenly gift is to make trial of the new truth. To be made partakers of the Holy Ghost is to be moved by a supernatural enlightening influence. To taste the good word of God is to discern the moral beauty of the revelation. To taste the powers of the world to come is to participate in the gifts of power which the Spirit divides to each one severally even as He will. All these things have an intellectual quality. Faith in Christ and love to God are purposely excluded. The Apostle brings together various phases of our spiritual intelligence, the gift of illumination, which we sometimes call genius, sometimes culture, sometimes insight, the faculty that ought to apprehend Christ and welcome the revelation in the Son. If these high gifts are used to scoff at the Son of God, and that with the persistence that can spring only from the pride and self-righteousness of unbelief, renewal is impossible. Second, the negative result of not bringing forth any useful herbs corresponds to falling away.[100] God has bestowed His gift of enlightenment, but there is no response of heart and will. The soul does not lay hold, but drifts away. Third, the positive result of bearing thorns and thistles corresponds to crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame. The gifts of God have been abused, and the contrary of what He, in His care for men, intended the earth to produce, is the result. The Divine gift of spiritual enlightenment has been itself turned into a very genius of cynical mockery. The Son of God has already been once crucified amid the awful scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary. The agony and bloody sweat, the cry of infinite loneliness on the Cross, the tender compassion of the dying Jesus, the power of His resurrection--all this is past. One bitterness yet remains. Men use God's own gift of spiritual illumination to crucify the Son afresh. But they crucify Him only for themselves.[101] When the sneer has died away on the scoffer's lips, nothing is left. No result has been achieved in the moral world. When Christ was crucified on Calvary, His death changed for ever the relations of God and men. When He is crucified in the reproach of His enemies, nothing has been accomplished outside the scoffer's little world of vanity and pride. Fourth, to be nigh unto a curse and to be given in the end to be burned corresponds to the impossibility of renewal. The illustration requires us to distinguish between "falling away" and "crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame."[102] The land is doomed to be burned because it bears thorns and thistles. God renders men incapable of repentance, not because they have fallen away once or more than once, but because they scoff at the Son, through Whom God has spoken unto us. The terrible impossibility of renewal here threatened applies, not to apostasy (as the early Church maintained) nor to the lapsed (as the Novatianists held),[103] but to apostasy combined with a cynical, scoffing temper that persists in treading the Son of God under foot. Apostasy resembles the sin against the Son of man; cynicism in reference to the Son of man comes very near the sin against the Holy Ghost. This sin is not forgiven, because it hardens the heart and makes repentance impossible. It hardens the heart, because God is jealous of His Son's honour, and punishes the scoffer with the utter destruction of the spiritual faculty and with absolute inability to recover it. This is not the mere force of habit. It is God's retribution, and the Apostle mentions it here because the text of the whole Epistle is that God has spoken unto us in His Son. But the Hebrew Christians have not come to this.[104] The Apostle is persuaded better things of them, and things that are nigh, not unto a curse, but unto ultimate salvation. Yet they are not free from the danger. If we may appropriate the language of an eminent historian, "the worship of wealth, grandeur, and dominion blinded the Jews to the form of spiritual godliness; the rejection of the Saviour and the deification of Herod were parallel manifestations of the same engrossing delusion."[105] That the Christian Hebrews may not fall under the curse impending over their race, the Apostle urges them to press on unto full growth of character. And this he and they will do--he ranks himself among them, and ventures to make reply in their name. But He must add an "if God permit." For there are men whom God will not permit to advance a jot higher. Because they have abused His great gift of illumination to scoff at the greater gift of the Son, they are doomed to forfeit possession of both. The only doomed man is the cynic. FOOTNOTES: [83] Hebrews 5:11 . [84] Hebrews 6:1 . [85] Hebrews 5:12 . [86] Acts 15:1-41 [87] tina ( Hebrews 5:12 ). [88] stoicheia . [89] aisthêtêria . [90] gegymnasmena . [91] aphentes ( Hebrews 6:1 ). [92] pherômetha . [93] teleiotêta . [94] themelion . [95] Hebrews 5:13 . [96] Hebrews 6:7 . [97] Hebrews 6:8 . [98] di' hous . [99] Hebrews 2:3 . [100] parapesontas ( Hebrews 6:6 ). Cf. pararyômen ( Hebrews 2:1 ). [101] heautois . [102] Apart from the exigencies of the illustration, the change from the aorist participle to the present participles tells in the same way. It is extremely harsh to consider anastaurauntas and paradeigmatizontas to be explanatory of parapesontas. The former must be rendered hypothetically: "They cannot be renewed after falling away if they persist in crucifying," etc. [103] The apostates, or deserters, were not identical with the lapsed, who fell away from fear of martyrdom. Novatian refused to restore either to Church privileges. The Church restored the latter, but not the former. Cf. Cyprian, EP 55 : ad fin . [104] Hebrews 6:9 . [105] Dean Merivale, Romans under the Empire , Hebrews. Hebrews 6:9 But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak. CHAPTER VI. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF FAILURE. "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak: for God is not unrighteous to forget your work and the love which ye showed toward His name, in that ye ministered unto the saints, and still do minister. And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope even to the end: that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham, since He could swear by none greater, He sware by Himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And thus, having patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men swear by the greater: and in every dispute of theirs the oath is final for confirmation. Wherein God, being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of His counsel, interposed with an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us; which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and entering into that which is within the veil; whither as a Forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a High-priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek."-- Hebrews 6:9-20 (R.V.). Solemn warning is followed by words of affectionate encouragement. Impossibility of renewal is not the only impossibility within the compass of the Gospel.[106] Over against the descent to perdition, hope of the better things grasps salvation with the one hand and the climbing pilgrim with the other, and makes his failure to reach the summit impossible. Both impossibilities have their source in God's justice. He is not unjust to forget the deed of love shown towards His name, when the only-begotten Son ministered to men and still ministers. Contempt of this love God will punish. Neither is He unjust to forget the love that ministered to His poor saints in days of persecution, when the Hebrew Christians became partakers with their fellow-believers in their reproaches and tribulations, showed pity towards their brethren in prisons, and took joyfully the spoiling of their goods.[107] The stream of brotherly kindness was still flowing. This love God rewards. But the Apostle desires them to show, not only faithfulness in ministering to the saints, but also Christian earnestness generally,[108] until they attain the full assurance of hope. The older expositors understand the words to express the Apostle's wish that his readers should continue to minister to the saints. But Calvin's view has, especially since the time of Bengel, been generally accepted: that the Apostle urges his readers to be as diligent in seeking the full assurance of hope as they are in ministering to the poor. This is most probably the meaning, but with the addition that he speaks of "earnestness" generally, not merely of active diligence. Their religion was too narrow in range. Care for the poor has sometimes been the piety of sluggish despondency and bigotry. But spiritual earnestness is the moral discipline that works hope, a hope that makes not ashamed, but leads men on to an assured confidence that the promise of God will be fulfilled, though now black clouds overspread their sky. An incentive to faith and endurance will be found in the example of all inheritors of God's promise.[109] The Apostle is on the verge of anticipating the splendid record of the eleventh chapter. But he arrests himself, partly because, at the present stage of his argument, he can speak of faith only as the deep fountain of endurance. He cannot now describe it as the realisation and the proof of things unseen.[110] He wishes, moreover, to dwell on the oath made by God to Abraham. Even this, if not an anticipation of what is still to come, is at least a preparation of the reader for the distinction hereafter effectively handled between the high-priest made without an oath and the High-priest made with an oath. But, in the present section, the emphatic notion is that the promise made to Abraham is the same promise which the Apostle and his brethren wait to see fulfilled, and that the confirmation of the promise by oath to Abraham is still in force for their strong encouragement. It is true that Abraham received the fulfilment of the promise in his lifetime, but only in a lower form. The promise, like the Sabbath rest, has become more and still more elevated, profound, spiritual, with the long delay of God to make it good. It is equally true that the saints under the Old Testament received not the fulfilment of the promise in its highest meaning, and were not perfected apart from believers of after-ages,[111] God's words never grow obsolete. They are never left behind by the Church. If they seem to pass away, they return laden with still choicer fruit. The coursing moon in the high heavens is never outstripped by the belated traveller. The hope of the Gospel is ever set before us. God swears to Abraham in the spring-time of the world that we, on whom the ends of the ages have come, may have a strong incentive to press onwards. But, if the oath of God to Abraham is to inspire us with new courage, we must resemble Abraham in the eager earnestness and calm endurance of his faith. The passage has often been treated as if the oath had been intended to meet the weakness of faith. But unbelief is logician enough to argue that God's word is as good as His bond; yea, that we have no knowledge of His oath except from His word. The Apostle refers to the greatest instance of faith ever shown even by Abraham, when he withheld not his son, his beloved son, on Moriah. The oath was made to him by God, not before he gave up Isaac, in order to encourage his weakness, but when he had done it, as a reward of his strength. Philo's fine sentence, which indeed the sacred writer partly borrows, is intended to teach the same lesson: that, while disappointments are heaped on sense, an endless abundance of good things has been given to the earnest soul and the perfect man.[112] It is to Abraham when he has achieved his supreme victory of faith that God vouchsafes to make oath that He will fulfil His promise. This gives us the clue to the purport of the words. Up to this final test of Abraham's faith God's promise is, so to speak, conditional. It will be fulfilled if Abraham will believe. Now at length the promise is given unconditionally. Abraham has gone triumphantly through every trial. He has not withheld his son. So great is his faith that God can now confirm His promise with a positive declaration, which transforms a promise made to a man into a prediction that binds Himself. Or shall we retract the expression that the promise is now given unconditionally? The condition is transferred from the faith of Abraham to the faithfulness of God. In this lies the oath. God pledges His own existence on the fulfilment of His promise. He says no longer, "If thou canst believe," but "As true as I live." Speaking humanly, unbelief on the part of Abraham would have made the promise of God of none effect; for it was conditional on Abraham's faith. But the oath has raised the promise above being affected by the unbelief of some, and itself includes the faith of some. St. Paul can now ask, "What if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith" (no longer merely the promise) "of God without effect?"[113] Our author also can speak of two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie. The one is the promise, the immutability of which means only that God, on His part, does not retract, but casts on men the blame if the promise is not fulfilled. The other is the oath, in which God takes the matter into His own hands and puts the certainty of His fulfilling the promise to rest on His own eternal being. The Apostle is careful to point out the wide and essential difference between the oath of God and the oaths of men. "For men swear by the greater;" that is, they call upon God, as the Almighty, to destroy them if they are uttering what is false. They imprecate a curse upon themselves. If they have sworn to a falsehood, and if the imprecation falls on their heads, they perish, and the matter ends. And yet an oath decides all disputes between man and man.[114] Though they appeal to an Omnipotence that often turns a deaf ear to their prayer against themselves; though, if the Almighty were to fling retribution on them, the wheels of nature would whirl as merrily as before; though, if their false swearing were to cause the heavens to fall, the men would still exist and continue to be men;--yet, for all this, they accept an oath as final settlement. They are compelled to come to terms; for they are at their wits' end. But it is very different with the oath of God. When He swears by Himself, He appeals, not to His omnipotence, but to His truthfulness. If any jot or tittle of God's promise fails to the feeblest child that trusts Him, God ceases to be. He has been annihilated, not by an act of power, but by a lie. We have said that the oath met, not the weakness, but the strength, of Abraham's faith. If so, why was it given him? First, it simplified his faith. It removed all tendency to morbid introspection and filled his spirit with a peaceful reliance on God's faithfulness. He had no more need to try himself whether he was in the faith. Anxious effort and painful struggle were over. Faith was now the very life of his soul. He could leave his concerns to God, and wait. This is the thought expressed in the word "enduring." Second, it was a new revelation of God to him, and thus elevated his spiritual nature. The moral character of the Most High, rather than His natural attribute of omnipotence, became the resting-place of his spirit. Even the joy of God's heart was made known and communicated to his. God was pleased with Abraham's final victory over unbelief, and wished to show him more abundantly[115] His counsel and the immutability of it. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant."[116] Third, it was intended also for our encouragement. It is strange, but true, that the promises of God are confirmed to us by the victorious faith of a nomad chief from Ur of the Chaldees, who, in the morning of the world's history, withheld not his son. After all, we are not disconnected units. God only can trace the countless threads of influence. Abraham's strong faith evoked the oath that now sustains the weakness of ours. Because he believed so well, the promise comes to us with all the sanction of God's own truth and unchangeableness. The oath made to Abraham was linked with a still more ancient, even an eternal, oath, made to the Son, constituting Him Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. The priesthood of Melchizedek is said by the Apostle to be a type of the priesthood founded on an oath. It was becoming that the man who acknowledged the priesthood of Melchizedek and received its blessing should have that blessing fulfilled to him in the confirmation by oath of God's promise. Thus the promises that have been fulfilled through the eternal priesthood of the true Melchizedek are confirmed to us by an oath made to him who acknowledged that priesthood in the typical Melchizedek. Yet, notwithstanding these vital points of contact, Abraham and the Hebrew Christians are in some respects very unlike. They have left his serene and contemplative life far behind. The souls of men are stirred with dread of the threatened end of all things. Abraham had no need to flee for refuge from an impending wrath. His religion even was not a fleeing from any wrath to come, but a yearning for a better fatherland. He never heard the midnight cry of Maranatha, but longed to be gathered to his fathers. If any similitude to the Christian's fleeing from the wrath to come must be sought in ancient days, it will be found in the history of Lot, not of Abraham. Whether the Apostle's thoughts rested for a moment on Lot's flight from Sodom, it is impossible to say. His mind is moving so rapidly that one illustration after another flits before his eye. The notion of Abraham's strong faith, reaching out a hand to the strong grasp of God's oath, reminds him of men fleeing for refuge, perhaps into a sanctuary, and laying hold of the horns of the altar, with a reminiscence of the Baptist's taunting question, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" and a side glance at the approaching destruction of the holy city, if indeed the catastrophe had not alread

Leaving the principles. Hebrews 6:1-3 Foundation-stones C. Stanford, D. D. I. HERE IS A STATEMENT MADE WITH REGARD TO THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF THE RELIGION WE PROFESS. He tells where they are revealed, and what they are. And, first, he would have his readers to understand that the principles of the doctrine of Christ are the "first principles of the oracles of God"; he uses the two expressions interchangeably, as if they both meant the same thing. His immediate object was to assert that the " doctrine of Christ," at which the Hebrews stumbled, was in reality no fresh revelation, but that all its rudiments had been taught in their own Mosaic Scriptures. A deep truth was contained in the saying of the ancient Church, "There were Christians on earth before there were Jews." Even from Paradise to Patmos, "the principles of the doctrine of Christ" have been taught with increasing gradations of development, as "the first principles of the oracles of God" — old, as well as new. This being established, Paul proceeds to enumerate these principles; and he appears to state them miscellaneously, without reference to their natural station or logical order. 1. And, first, "Repentance from dead works." Dead works are works performed by one whose life is separated from the life of God. Thus separated, men may have the quality of manliness, but not of godliness; towards one another there may be melting love, heroic daring, unbending justice, most magnificent generosity; but whatever they may be with regard to men, with regard to God they are dead. Alienated from His life, even good works are dead works; dead while they live; dead as the dead leaves on the dead bough, parted from its parent stem. It is the doctrine of a merely human religion, that while we should repent of our evil works, we should trust in our righteous works for heaven. But it is the doctrine of Christ that we should repent of all the works wrought while our souls were dead in sin; and when we feel the quickening thrills of a new life, this repentance will take place. 2. But, secondly, turning from sin implies turning to God. We shall have no disposition to renounce our dead works until, united to the living God by faith, we are partakers of His life. Faith towards God, therefore, is another elementary principle of the oracles. To have "faith towards God " is to feel able to say, "I think, I will, I speak, I act as I do, because I have faith towards God"; it is to feel His Spirit touch us, to have the most affecting sense of His society, to act as under His inspection, to be alive to His presence as the most intense of all realities, giving the zest to every pleasure, the light to every beauty, the soul to every scene; to trust Him for the food, and raiment, and home, both of our mortal and immortal nature; to make Him the confidant of every weakness, and want, and woe; to revive beneath the sun-burst of His smile, and to mourn at the hiding of His face. 3. But we shall never bare faith towards God, or approach Him in the way that has been just described, until our infected spirits have applied to a fountain of cleansing. So another essential principle is "the doctrine of baptisms." Those baptisms told not only of sin, but of a fountain opened for sin; and we know where that precious fountain flows. Rejoice to think that it is a fountain, and not a scanty supply. 4. But the doctrine, or the true meaning of the laying on of hands, was another principle of the doctrine of Christ. It conveyed a doctrine, and the doctrine was that he who would be saved must, by b is own personal act and deed appropriate the work of Him who is our Saviour by being our substitute, 5. The resurrection of the dead is another essential article of faith, and one, like the rest, peculiar to inspired revelation. Nature does not teach it. It never dawned on the proud thoughts of philosophy. Even those beautiful mysteries of the spring, which are sometimes thought to teach, inferentially, the doctrine of a resurrection, convey no teaching sufficiently defined to still the agonies of doubt or sorrow. The changes they witness and the charms they show are revivals, not resurrections. But in the oracles of God all the great problems that affect the destiny of man receive a full solution, and all the questions that come from his breaking heart meet with a distinct response. The resurrection of the dead is a "doctrine of Christ." The Emperor Theodosius having, on a great occasion, opened all the prisons and released his prisoners, is reported to have said, "And now, would to God I could open all the tombs and give life to the dead!" But there is no limit to the mighty power and royal grace of Jesus. He opens the prisons of justice and the prisons of death with equal and infinite ease: He redeems not the soul only, but the body. From the hour of the "laying on of hands," the entire man has been saved. 6. But, once more: the eternal judgment has ever been a primary article of revelation. Though analogy, intuition, and universal opinion rosy have furnished grounds to justify belief in it as a probable event, only the "oracles of God" could unfold its principles, or announce its absolute certainty. This they have ever done. He, through whose sacrifice our souls have received a "baptism" — He who has become our substitute by "the laying on of bands," bearing all the pressure of our responsibility, and binding Himself to be answerable for us at the judgment-day — will be Himself our Judge. But there are some of you who have no right to these anticipations. You have not made provision for the great hereafter. By that tremendous phrase, "eternal judgment," consider your ways and be wise! II. And now, passing from the doctrinal statement, let us give attention, to THE PRACTICAL APPEAL. 1. "Not laying again the foundation." The teacher, in this phrase, at once indicates the course he intends to adopt in his own instructions, and the conduct he would prescribe to those who study them. "Not laying again the foundation." God will not lay it again in His purposes; you are not to be for ever laying it again your mind and memory; as it is settled in the heavens, so let it be settled here. as new. This being established, Paul proceeds to enumerate these principles; and he appears to state them miscellaneously, without reference to their natural station or logical order. 1. And, first, "Repentance from dead works." Dead works are works performed by one whose life is separated from the life of God. Thus separated, men may have the quality of manliness, but not of godliness; towards one another there may be melting love, heroic daring, unbending justice, most magnificent generosity; but whatever they may be with regard to men, with regard to God they are dead. Alienated from His life, even good works are dead works; dead while they live; dead as the dead leaves on the dead bough, parted from its parent stem. It is the doctrine of a merely human religion, that while we should repent of our evil works, we should trust in our righteous works for heaven. But it is the doctrine of Christ that we should repent of all the works wrought while our souls were dead in sin; and when we feel the quickening thrills of a new life, this repentance will take place. 2. But, secondly, turning from sin implies turning to God. We shall have no disposition to renounce our dead works until, united to the living God by faith, we are partakers of His life. Faith towards God, therefore, is another elementary principle of the oracles. To have "faith towards God" is to feel able to say, "I think, I will, I speak, I act as I do, because I have faith towards God"; it is to feel His Spirit touch us, to have the most affecting sense of His society, to act as under Hits inspection, to be alive to His presence as the most intense of all realities, giving the zest to every pleasure, the light to every beauty, the soul to every scene; to trust Him for the food, and raiment, and home, both of our mortal and immortal nature; to make Him the confidant of every weakness, and want, and woe; to revive beneath the sun-burst of His smile, and to mourn at the hiding of His face. 3. But we shall never have faith towards God, or approach Him in the way that has been just described, until our infected spirits have applied to a fountain of cleansing. So another essential principle is "the doctrine of baptisms." Those baptisms told not only of sin, but of a fountain opened for sin; and we know where that precious fountain flows. Rejoice to think that it is a fountain, and not a scanty supply. 4. But the doctrine, or the true meaning of the laying on of hands, was another principle of the doctrine of Christ. It conveyed a doctrine, and the doctrine was that he who would be saved must, by his own personal act and deed appropriate the work of Him who is our Saviour by being our substitute. 5. The resurrection of the dead is another essential article of faith, and one, like the rest, peculiar to inspired revelation. Nature does not teach it. It never dawned on the proud thoughts of philosophy. Even those beautiful mysteries of the spring, which are sometimes thought to teach, inferentially, the doctrine of a resurrection, convey no teaching sufficiently defined to still the agonies of doubt or sorrow. The changes they witness and the charms they show are revivals, not resurrections. But in the oracles of God all the great problems that affect the destiny of man receive a full solution, and all the questions that come from his breaking heart meet with a distinct response. The resurrection of the dead is a "doctrine of Christ." The Emperor Theodosius having, on a great occasion, opened all the prisons and released his prisoners, is reported to have said, "And now, would to God I could open all the tombs and give life to the dead!" But there is no limit to the mighty power and royal grace of Jesus. He opens the prisons of justice and the prisons of death with equal and infinite ease: He redeems not the soul only, but the body. From the hour of the "laying on of hands," the entire man has been saved. 6. But, once more: the eternal judgment has ever been a primary article of revelation. Though analogy, intuition, and universal opinion rosy have furnished grounds to justify belief in it as a probable event, only the "oracles of God" could unfold its principles, or announce its absolute certainty. This they have ever done. He, through whose sacrifice our souls have received a" baptism" — He who has become our substitute by "the laying on of hands," bearing all the pressure of our responsibility, and binding Himself to be answerable for us at the judgment-day — will be Himself our Judge. But there are some of you who have no right to these anticipations. You have not made provision for the great hereafter. By that tremendous phrase, "eternal judgment," consider your ways and be wise! II. And now, passing from the doctrinal statement, let us give attention, to THE PRACTICAL APPEAL, 1. "Not laying again the foundation." The teacher, in this phrase, at once indicates the course he intends to adopt in his own instructions, and the conduct he would prescribe to those who study them. "Not laying again the foundation." God will not lay it again in His purposes; you are not to be for ever laying it again in your mind and memory; as it is settled in the heavens, so let it be settled here. "Not laying again the foundation." You are not to forget it, so as to have to learn it again; you ale not to doubt it, so as to need to be convinced of it again; .you are not to forsake it, so as to have to return to it again. "Not laying again the foundation." You are not to be like an insane or unskilful builder, who excavates the foundation of his work, tears it from its place, and takes it to pieces, being doubtful of its materials, or uncertain of its sufficiency to sustain the superincumbent weight; and who, always engaged in destroying the foundation, and laying it again, makes no progress with his building. 2. "Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ." At first sight the meaning of this clause is not obvious, and it seems to clash with those connected with it. There are different ways of leaving an object. his fathers house, never to return We may leave it as the spendthrift son leaves we may leave it as the deserter leaves the shield which he is "vilely east away"; we may leave it as education and refinement leave ignorance and rusticity; but not so ale we to leave these first principles of our faith. We are to leave them as the scholar leaves the letters of the alphabet — leaving them only to use them; leaving them that he may bring clot all their powers, and employ them in startling combinations, as the instrument for acquiring or diffusing thought. We are to leave them as the plant leaves its root, when it towers into a majestic tree, leaving it only that it may the more depend upon it; and, day by day, drawing from it those fresh supplies of vital sap which it pours into the fresh leaves, fresh boughs, ever fresh and ever beautiful formations of that life which refreshes the hungry with its clusters, or the weary with its shade. We are to leave them as the builder leaves his foundation, that he may carry up the building, stone above stone, story above story, tower above tower, from the dusky basement to the sun-lit pinnacle; always leaving the foundation, yet always on it, and on it with the most massive pressure, and the most complete dependence, when most he leaves it. 3. "Let us go on unto perfection." It is obvious that there can be no reference, in this a word "perfection," to the justifying work of Christ on our behalf. That is perfect from the first moment we believe. At once we receive perfect forgiveness, and a perfect title to the "inheritance in light." But, although justification is complete, sanctification has yet to be carried on. To borrow the idea of a transatlantic writer: "A perfect title to a piece of property puts a man in possession of it just as absolutely on the first day when it was given as twenty years after. When a man gives a flower, it is a perfect gift; but the gift of grace is rather the gift of a flower seed." It contains within it all the Divine germs necessary for growth. And we are asked to cherish it, that it may go on unto perfection, as the seed goes on to the perfection of a full-blown flower. 4. The word employed to indicate the manner of arriving at this end is richly significant. "Let us go on to perfection," should rather be rendered, "Let us be carried on." "The word is emphatical, intimating such a kind of progress as a ship makes when it is under sail. ' Let us be carried on ' with the full bent of our minds and affections, with the utmost endeavours of our whole souls. We have abode long enough by the shore; let us now hoist our sails, and launch into the deep." Perhaps we feel discouraged by the labour, and alarmed by the very glory of our calling. The one may seem too much for us to exercise, and the other too great for us to hope for. Almost despairing of our ability to go forward, we may even now be thinking of going back. But if we are unable to go on, we are surely able to be carried on to perfection. And the Eternal Almightiness is even now at .our side. ( C. Stanford, D. D. )

6:1-8 Every part of the truth and will of God should be set before all who profess the gospel, and be urged on their hearts and consciences. We should not be always speaking about outward things; these have their places and use, but often take up too much attention and time, which might be better employed. The humbled sinner who pleads guilty, and cries for mercy, can have no ground from this passage to be discouraged, whatever his conscience may accuse him of. Nor does it prove that any one who is made a new creature in Christ, ever becomes a final apostate from him. The apostle is not speaking of the falling away of mere professors, never convinced or influenced by the gospel. Such have nothing to fall away from, but an empty name, or hypocritical profession. Neither is he speaking of partial declinings or backslidings. Nor are such sins meant, as Christians fall into through the strength of temptations, or the power of some worldly or fleshly lust. But the falling away here mentioned, is an open and avowed renouncing of Christ, from enmity of heart against him, his cause, and people, by men approving in their minds the deeds of his murderers, and all this after they have received the knowledge of the truth, and tasted some of its comforts. Of these it is said, that it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance. Not because the blood of Christ is not sufficient to obtain pardon for this sin; but this sin, in its very nature, is opposite to repentance and every thing that leads to it. If those who through mistaken views of this passage, as well as of their own case, fear that there is no mercy for them, would attend to the account given of the nature of this sin, that it is a total and a willing renouncing of Christ, and his cause, and joining with his enemies, it would relieve them from wrong fears. We should ourselves beware, and caution others, of every approach near to a gulf so awful as apostacy; yet in doing this we should keep close to the word of God, and be careful not to wound and terrify the weak, or discourage the fallen and penitent. Believers not only taste of the word of God, but they drink it in. And this fruitful field or garden receives the blessing. But the merely nominal Christian, continuing unfruitful under the means of grace, or producing nothing but deceit and selfishness, was near the awful state above described; and everlasting misery was the end reserved for him. Let us watch with humble caution and prayer as to ourselves. 6:9,10 There are things that are never separated from salvation; things that show the person to be in a state of salvation, and which will end in eternal salvation. And the things that accompany salvation, are better things than ever any dissembler or apostate enjoyed. The works of love, done for the glory of Christ, or done to his saints for Christ's sake, from time to time, as God gives occasion, are evident marks of a man's salvation; and more sure tokens of saving grace given, than the enlightenings and tastings spoken of before. No love is to be reckoned as love, but working love; and no works are right works, which flow not from love to Christ. 6:11-20 The hope here meant, is a sure looking for good things promised, through those promises, with love, desire, and valuing of them. Hope has its degrees, as faith also. The promise of blessedness God has made to believers, is from God's eternal purpose, settled between the eternal Father, Son, and Spirit. These promises of God may safely be depended upon; for here we have two things which cannot change, the counsel and the oath of God, in which it is not possible for God to lie; it would be contrary to his nature as well as to his will. And as He cannot lie; the destruction of the unbeliever, and the salvation of the believer, are alike certain. Here observe, those to whom God has given full security of happiness, have a title to the promises by inheritance. The consolations of God are strong enough to support his people under their heaviest trials. Here is a refuge for all sinners who flee to the mercy of God, through the redemption of Christ, according to the covenant of grace, laying aside all other confidences. We are in this world as a ship at sea, tossed up and down, and in danger of being cast away. We need an anchor to keep us sure and steady. Gospel hope is our anchor in the storms of this world. It is sure and stedfast, or it could not keep us so. The free grace of God, the merits and mediation of Christ, and the powerful influences of his Spirit, are the grounds of this hope, and so it is a stedfast hope. Christ is the object and ground of the believer's hope. Let us therefore set our affections on things above, and wait patiently for his appearance, when we shall certainly appear with him in glory.