We must indeed regard the Law under these two distinct aspects, in order that we may fully appreciate its character and its office. We must, that is, regard it on the one side as a body of commandments imposed upon man's obedience; and we must regard it on the other side as a system of ritual provided by God's mercy. The one view is, as has been remarked, characteristic of St Paul, and the other of the author of the Epistle. Each when carefully studied reveals the failure of the Law to satisfy man's needs, and so shews its necessary transitoriness. As a legal code it tended to bondage, and was incapable of fulfilment, and so brought a deep knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20 ejpivgnwsi" aJmartiva" ). As an institution for the removal of sin, it was designed only to deal with ceremonial defilement, and was therefore essentially insufficient (Heb. 10:3 f.). Thus the Epistle to the Hebrews completes the teaching of St Paul on the imperfection of the Law. St Paul from the subjective side shews that the individual can be brought near to God only by personal faith and not by any outward works: the author of the Epistle from the objective side shews that purification cannot be gained by any sacrifices of bulls and goats but only through the offering of the Blood of Christ.
The difference between St Paul and the writer of the Epistle in their view of the Law may be presented in another light. St Paul regards the Law mainly in relation to the requirements of man's discipline: his fellow-apostle in relation to the fulfilment of God's counsel. For St Paul the Law was an episode, intercalated, as it were, in the course of revelation (Rom. 5:20 pareish'lqen ): for the writer of the Epistle it was a shadow of the realities to which the promise pointed. It is closely connected with this fundamental distinctness of the point of vision of the two teachers that St Paul dwells with dominant interest on the individual aspect of the Gospel, the writer of the Epistle on its social aspect: for the one the supreme contrast is between flesh and spirit, for the other between the image and the reality, the imperfect and the perfect: for the one Christ is the direct object of personal faith, for the other the fulfiller of the destiny of man.
But this difference, however real and intelligible, does not issue in any opposition between the two writers. Both views are completely satisfied by the Incarnation; and each writer recognises the truth which the other develops. In the Epistle to the Ephesians St Paul gives the widest possible expression to the social lessons of the Faith; and the writer to the Hebrews emphasises with the most touching solemnity the significance of personal responsibility (e.g., Heb. 6). At the same time the writer to the Hebrews suggests the unity, the harmonious unfolding, of the divine plan, in a way which is foreign to the mode of thought of him who was suddenly changed from a persecutor to an apostle. His eyes rest on one heavenly archetype made known to men as they could bear the sight in various degrees. He presupposes a divine ideal of the phenomenal world and of outward worship. This, he argues, was shadowed forth in the Mosaic system; and found its perfect embodiment under the conditions of earth in the Christian Church. He looks therefore with deep sympathy upon the devotion with which the Hebrews had regarded the provisions made by the Law for dealing with the power and guilt of sin. He enters into their feelings, and points out how Christ satisfied them by His Person and His work.
It is not difficult to see how the circumstances in which the Hebrews