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and absolute Mediation, and establishing a more perfect and absolute Covenant, embodying finally the connexion of God and man. There is nothing in the Old which is not taken up and transfigured in the New.

For it is assumed throughout the Epistle that all visible theocratic institutions answer to a divine antitype (archetype). They are (so to speak) a translation into a particular dialect of eternal truths: a representation under special conditions of an absolute ideal.

In some sense, which we can feel rather than define, the eternal is declared to lie beneath the temporal (12:27). In virtue of this truth the work of Christ and the hope of the Christian are both described under Jewish imagery, without the least admixture of the millenarian extravagances which gained currency in the second century. There is for the believer a priestly consecration (10:22 note), an altar (13:10 note), a sabbath-rest (4:9).

It follows therefore that in studying the Levitical ritual we must recognise that there is a true correspondence of the seen with the unseen, a correspondence which extends to the fulness of life, and not simply a correspondence of a world of ideas ( kovsmo" nohtov" ), as Philo supposed, to a world of phenomena.

The same principle holds still under the Christian dispensation. We see the reality but only in figures (e.g., Apoc. 21:16). Judaism was the shadow, and Christianity is the substance; yet both are regarded under the conditions of earth. But the figures have an abiding significance. There is a heavenly city in the spiritual world, an organised body of rational beings; ‘a congregation’

( ejkklhsiva ) which answers to the full enjoyment of the privileges of social life: Heb. 11:10 ( hJ tou;" qem. e[c. povli" ); 11:16; 12:22 f. (comp. 8:11; 13:14; and Addit. Note on 11:10). There is also a heavenly sanctuary there, which was the pattern of the earthly, to confirm the eternal duty and joy of worship: 8:2,
5.

In this aspect the Epistle fulfils a universal work. It is addressed to Hebrews, and meets, as we have seen, their peculiar difficulties, but at the same time it deals with the largest views of the Faith. This it does not by digression or contrast. It discloses the catholicity of the Gospel by the simple interpretation of its scope. It does not insist on the fact as anything new or strange. It does not dwell on ‘the breaking down of the middle wall of partition’ (Eph. 2:14), or on ‘the mystery which in other ages was not made known...that the Gentiles are...fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus’ (Eph. 3:4 ff.; Rom. 16:25 f.). The equality of men as men in the sight of God is implied in the declaration which is made of the Person and the Work of Christ. Faith is the condition of a divine fellowship, and that is essentially universal. The truth that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile has passed beyond the stage of keen controversy. It is acknowledged in the conception which has been gained of the Incarnation.

Viewed in this light, the Epistle to the Hebrews forms a complement to the Gospel of St John. Both Books assume the universality of Christianity as the one religion of humanity, without special argument (comp. John 1:12). Both regard ‘the Jews’—the men who clung to that which was transitory as if it were absolute and eternal—as enemies of Christ. Both recognise completely the provisional office of the Old Dispensation (John 4:22 ff.). But they do this from different sides. The Epistle to the Hebrews enables us to see how Christianity is the absolute fulfilment of the idea of the positive institutions of


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