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divisions, limited approaches to God, was a parable he says for the time now present (9:9). It had lessons to teach. It witnessed to the needs of men; and yet the whole ritual which it embodied could not reach beyond the outward and visible (9:10, 13). Thus we see in the Epistle that the Levitical system discharged a two-fold office. It had an educational value, as enforcing the great thoughts of Judaism; and it had also an immediate value, as dealing under the conditions of the Mosaic Covenant with the sins and weaknesses of the people of God.

The latter function of the Law has been already touched upon in considering the provision which was made by the Levitical sacrifices for maintaining and restoring the outward divine fellowship with which it corresponded (p. 288).

The educational value of the Levitical system is affirmed in the Epistle both in respect of its general character (8:5; 9:24), and even in details (9:21,
23). As a ‘copy’ (
uJpovdeigma ) it could not but carry the thoughts of the devout worshipper to the archetype: as ‘a shadow’ it suggested the reality to which it bore witness. The ordinances testified with eloquent insistence to the two central facts of man's inner life, that he is constrained to draw near to God, and that he has no free access to Him. In other words they kept before the faithful Israelite the essential conceptions of man's destiny and man's sin.

These thoughts were brought out especially by the institutions of the priesthood and the offerings. In both there was a recognition at once of a fundamental need of human life, and of the inadequacy of the manner in which it was met. The priests themselves had no inherent right to the privilege which they were allowed to exercise. They had no personal fitness for approach to the Divine Presence (7:27); and they had no continuance in the exercise of their office (7:23). The living offerings again were both irrational and involuntary (10:4), and alien in nature from those whom they represented. At the same time priests and offerings were fitted to keep alive the sense of an ideal Son of man who should ‘walk with God’ according to the purpose of creation, and of a perfect sacrifice rendered in the glad obedience of life and death under the actual circumstances of humanity (7:16; 10:5 ff.).

The ‘Law’ is thus presented, according to St Paul's image, as the ‘tutor’ ( paidagwgov" ) appointed to lead men to Christ (Gal. 3:24; comp. 1 Cor. 4:15) unto the freedom of mature life; to deepen the feeling of God's righteousness and man's sin, and at the same time to suggest the thought of forgiveness, through which that which was ‘naturally’ impossible was to be reached in due time, when a new Melchizedek once more in the dignity of a true manhood united for ever the elements of the fulness of life in one Person, as Priest and King.
iii. This consummation was brought emphatically before Israel in a

second promise when their first hopes had failed most signally. Looking out on national disruption, overthrow, captivity, the prophet declared that the purpose of God had not failed; that a new Covenant would be established on grace and not on law, spiritual and not external, uniformly efficacious, bringing a complete forgiveness (Heb. 8:7 ff.). So at last Israel was to fulfil its priestly work for the nations to which it was called (Lev. 19:2), and which for a time it could not face (Ex. 20:19; Deut. 5:28).

The comprehensiveness of the references to the record of the


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