Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/639

HEBREWS 605 ture of the writer and the language in which he writes furnish one argument. Then the most marked proof of Christian love and zeal in the church addressed was that they had ever been assiduous in ministering to the saints (vi. 10). This expression may conceivably have a general sense (1 Cor. xvi. 151), but it is far more likely that it has the specific meaning which it generally bears in the New Testament, viz., the collection of alms for the church in Jerusalem. At any rate it was clearly understood in the j first age of Christianity that the Judasan Church took alms and did not give them, receiving in temporal things an acknowledgment for the spiritual things they had imparted (Rom. xv. 27). In fact the great weight laid in the epistles of Paul on this the only manifestation of the catholicity of the church then possible (Gal. ii. 10) alone explains the emphasis with which our author cites this one proof o.f Christian feeling. Again, the expressions in ii. 3 already referred to imply that the readers did not include in their number direct disciples of Jesus, but had been brought to Christ by the words and miracles of apostolic missionaries j now dead (xiii. 7). This conversion, as it appears from x. 32, was a thing of precise date immediately followed by persecution (note the aorists </>u>ria-$vrs inrefj.eiva.Tf) ; so that we cannot think of a second generation in the Palestinian Church, but are referred to some part of the Diaspora. Against these difficulties, which have led some of the latest defenders of the Palestinian address, as Grimm (who, in Hilgenfeld s Zeitschr. 1870, proposes Jamnia) and MoultoQ (New Testament Commentary for English Readers, vol. iii., 1379), to give up Jerusalem altogether, while others, as Riehm, suppose that the Hellenists of Jerusalem (Acts vi. 1) are primarily addressed, it is commonly urged that the readers are exposed to peculiar danger from the persecutions and solicitations of unbelieving Jews, that they are in danger of relapsing into participation in the Jewish sacrifices, or even that they appear to have never ceased to follow the ceremonial observances that had their centre in the temple ritual. The capital argument for this is drawn from xiii. 13, where the exhortation to go forth to Jesus without the camp is taken as an injunction to renounce fellowship with the synagogue and with the ceremonies and ritual of Judaism. But this exegesis rests on a false view of the context, which does not include verse 9, and expresses by a figure that Christians (as the priests of the new covenant) have no temporal advantage to expect by their participation in the sacrifice of Christ, but must be content to share his reproach, renouncing this earthly country for the heavenly kingdom (cf. xi. 16, 25-27 with xiii. 14; Phil. iii. 20), Altogether, this view of the situation of the first readers of the epistle appears distorted or exaggerated. It is obvious that our Hebrews were familiar with the law, and had a high regard for the ordinances of temple worship. In particular it appears that they had not fully understood how the mediatorial functions of the Old Testament were superseded by the mediatorship of Christ. But their ritualism seems to have been rather theoretical than practical. Had they been actually entangled in the daily practice of superseded ordinances, the author, whose insight into the true worth of these ordinances is clear, and whose personal relations to the Pauline circle are obvious, could hardly have been so nearly one of themselves as appears in xiii. 19, and at any rate could not have failed to give an express precept on the subject. But, on the contrary, he is in thorough sympathy with the type of doctrine on which their church was formed (xiii. 7) ; the easy way in which he touches on the " meats and drinks and divers washings " of Judaism seems to show that on this head he could count on carrying his readers along with him ; and xiii. 9 hardly refers to sacrifices or to Levitical laws of clean and unclean, but rather to some such form of asceticism (cf. ver. 4) as is spoken of in Rom. xiv. Nowhere does our author speak a warning against participation in sacrifices ; nowhere does he touch on the burning questions that divided the Pharisaic Christians of Jerusalem from the converts of Paul. The practical lesson which he draws from his doctrine is that his readers ought to use with diligence the specifically Christian way of access to God (x. 19 seq.) ; and the only positive fault which he mentions in this connexion is a disposition to neglect the privilege of social worship (x. 25). This again is plainly connected, not with an inclination to return to the synagogue, but with a relaxation of the zeal and patience of the first days of their Christian profession (vi. 4 seq.; x. 32 seq.; xii. 1 seq.), associated with a less firm hold than they once had of the essentials of Christian faith, a less clear vision of the heavenly hope of their calling (iii. 12; iv. 11 ; v. 12). The apostle fears lest they fall away not merely from the higher standpoint of Christianity into Judaizing practices, but from all faith in God and judgment and immortality (iii. 12 ; vi. 1 seq.). 1 For the solution of the problem of the epistle it is of the highest importance to form an exacter conception of the causes and nature of this unhealthy condition of the church. Their first conversion had been followed by direct persecution, which their faith had triumphantly overcome. But these days were long gone by (x. 32). It does not appear that a like severity of trial had again fallen upon them. But there were persecutions at least in other parts of the church (xiii. 3, 23). The times were troubled, and from day to day there were many trials and many reproaches to sustain. The dull and long-continued strain of conflict with surrounding wickedness was harder to bear than a sharp onslaught of the enemy (ch. xii.). They were weary of enduring, weary of hope deferred, and so the bonds of their Christian unity were loosened, their brotherly love weakened (xiii. 1 seq.), and they began to doubt the verity of those heavenly good things which their first faith had so vividly realized. In such circumstances it was natural that the writer should lay stress on the contrast between the eternal and the transitory, the things of faith and the things of sight, the heavenly Zion and the earthly pilgrimage. But the remarkable feature of the epistle is that this contrast is drawn out in the form of a threefold argument to show the superiority of Christianity over the old dispensation, inasmuch as Christ is superior (1) to the angels, (2) to Moses, (3) and chiefly to the Levitical priest hood and its mediatorship. In each of these relations, it is argued, the old covenant, which is earthly, temporal, and without finality, contains within itself the evidence of its own imperfection, and points to the time when it shall be superseded by a new covenant in which every reality and every hope is heavenly, eternal, or, as we should say, ideal. It is the form of this argument which mainly gives force to the common impression that the Hebrews addressed were in danger of seeking access to God by the superseded methods of the old dispensation in short, that the epistle is a warning against an Ebionite tendency to Christian Pharisaism. But to such a tendency, as we have seen, the practical admonitions of the epistle by no means point. To some scholars accordingly, and particularly to Reuss (Ilistoire de la Theologie Chretienne, liv. vi. chap. 1 ; Les fipitres Catholiques, Paris, 1878), the theoretical part of the book has seemed disproportionate to the practical and personal conclusion, and it has been proposed to regard the whole as a theological system with an epistolary appendix. Doubtless this view contains an element of truth. In a 1 The statement of Renan, V Antechrist, pp. xiv., 215, 219, that some had already fallen away and that the question of their readmis- sion was being agitated, seems to be part of the ingenious historical

romance in which he has enveloped the whole origin of the epistle.