Christ having thus shed His blood for us, hath entered into the holiest as our representative with the Father. In His priestly office, in human glorified form, He hath passed into the heavens; He hath gone into some portion of space, we know not where, from whence He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. It was needful for His people, as He states in the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel, that He should go away; for if He went not away, the Holy Spirit would not come unto them. The Holy Ghost was to be poured down from on high in answer to Jesus' intercessions, and for these intercessions it was necessary that He should be in a sphere of holiness. This is the cause of His absence from the world, that, away from the region of its unholy atmosphere, He might in His exalted nature hold full and free communion with the Father. With His divine, all-pervasive knowledge, He can govern His church even upon earth, being, as God, acquainted with the minutest want and desire of every individual member of it, possessing in His memory the concerns of innumerable multi

tudes of souls, presenting the tears, and lamentations, and strivings of His people at the same moment before the Father, and obtaining for them blessings the most varied and manifold. The intercourse of the Father with the Son in that fulness which is needful unto the intercessorial office could not, we believe, have taken place in a world still the abode of sin. It had to be removed into a higher sphere, when the Pentecostal effusion was about to take place; and it must remain in that region until the full establishment of the promised kingdom. As from the holy place, when the high priest entered in and the cloud of God's presence was seen, there issued forth upon the land of Israel blessings innumerable; so from that holy region into which the Son, in glorified human form, hath entered, there come all the grace, and power, and truth, and righteousness which are to be found in the church struggling in the world against sin and temptation.

Having, then, such a " High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a

true heart in full assurance of faith, having

our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." Our attention is directed first unto the person of the High Priest; and secondly, unto the method of approach unto the throne of grace which His person and character are fitted to teach us.

I. As the high priest entered into the holy place through the sacrifice of atonement, so Jesus himself ascended on high through that sacrifice which He accomplished on the cross. It was because His soul went down into the very depths; because He bore our sins and carried our sorrows; was stricken, smitten, and afflicted; was taken from prison and from judgment; was cut off out of the land of the living, and made His grave with the wicked in His death; because it pleased the Lord to bruise Him and to put Him to grief, and to make His soul an offering for sin, that He entered upon that priestly office which He now exerciseth in heavenly places. When He had assumed the nature of man, put Himself in our position in all respects except as regards sin, it needed that He should go down to the very

depths of affliction,-depths lower than ever soul of man had passed through before-that He might bear the penalty which the transgressions of His church had brought upon Him. Thus He passed upwards unto His priesthood from the darkness of the grave, rising again with full power to obtain the remission of the sins of the guilty.

This was the chief reason of the Son of God associating Himself with the human family. It was that He might be accursed for us, and might, by reason of His being Himself Divine, offer a meritorious sacrifice to the Father. No creature can do anything absolutely meritorious, since he renders to God only of the powers which God hath given; he may do what God in His goodness is pleased to account as merit, but he cannot do anything that would give to him a fair title to compensation from God. If one man entrusts another with certain money or certain powers, that other can have no claim against him within the region of those gifts bestowed. Now the creature owes his very being to God; the powers he has, the opportunities, the associations, the world.

without him—all are God's; and whatever he does with them, he does with gifts which do not absolutely belong to him, and which he could not, but for God's continued power, preserve for a day. The soul itself, though created immortal by the will of God, would cease to exist, if it were possiblewhich it is not-for God to change. It is only therefore to this unchangeableness of God that any creature owes the certainty of existence, even when created immortal. If we cannot then view existence apart from God, surely we cannot regard anything else apart from Him: all dependeth upon Him and is received from Him: there can thus be no absolute merit or claim upon God, whatever a mere creature may do or may suffer. There are two kinds of merit, which it is of the highest importance to distinguish first, the merit of grace, which every unfallen or redeemed creature may have from the goodness of God, God loving to associate reward with virtuous action, just as He hath taught a good father to do in the education of his children, and a liberalhearted man to do in all the relations of life;