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no farther either in principles or in method.

( a ) Barnabas sets forth what he holds to be the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament without principle or self-restraint. He is satisfied if he can give an edifying meaning to the letter in any way. He offers his explanations to all; and in the main deals with trivial details (e.g., ch. 9, the explanation of IHT).

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews on the other hand exercises a careful reserve. He recognises a due relation between the scholar and his lesson; and the examples by which he illustrates his leading thoughts are all of representative force: the idea of rest (the Sabbath-rest, the rest of Canaan, the rest of Christ): the idea of priesthood (the priest of men, the priest of the chosen people): the idea of access to God (the High-priest in the Holy of holies, Christ seated on the right-hand of God).

The one example which the two Epistles have in common, the rest of God after creation, offers a characteristic contrast. In the Epistle to the Hebrews it suggests the thought of the spiritual destiny of man: in Barnabas it supplies a chronological measure of the duration of the world (Heb. 4; Barn.
xv.).

( b ) Barnabas again treats the Mosaic legislation as having only a symbolic meaning. It had no historical, no disciplinary value whatever. The outward embodiment of the enigmatic ordinances was a pernicious delusion. As a mere fleshly observance circumcision was the work of an evil power (Barn. 9.4) But the evil power apparently gave a wrong interpretation to the command on which it was based and did not originate the command (comp. Just. M. Dial. 16).

In the Epistle to the Hebrews on the other hand the Mosaic system is treated as a salutary discipline, suited for the training of those to whom it was given, fashioned after a heavenly pattern (Heb. 7:5; 10:1), preparatory and not final, and yet possessing throughout an educational value. The Levitical sacrifices, for example, were fitted to keep alive in the Jews a sense of sin and to lead thought forward to some true deliverance from its power. The priesthood, again, and high-priesthood suggested thoughts which they did not satisfy, and exactly in proportion as they were felt to be divine institutions, they sustained the hope of some complete satisfaction. The purpose of God is indeed fulfilled from the first, though to us the fulfilment is shewn in fragments. Hence the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews goes beyond the Law, and in the gentile Melchizedek finds the fullest type of the King-priest to come.

( c ) There is another point of resemblance and contrast between the Epistle of Barnabas and the Epistle to the Hebrews which specially deserves to be noticed. Barnabas (c. xvi.) dwells on the perils and the failures of the external Law fashioned under the later Temple into a shape which affected permanence. In this he marks a real declension in the development of Judaism. The Temple, like the Kingdom, was a falling away from the divine ideal. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews recognises the same fact, but he places the original divine order apart from the results of man's weakness. He goes back to the Tabernacle for all his illustrations, in which the transitoriness of the whole system was clearly signified.

In a word, in the Epistle of Barnabas there is no sense of the continuity of the divine discipline of men, of an education of the world corresponding to the growth of humanity: no recognition of the importance of outward


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