were placed gave a peculiar importance to the thought of priestly atonement with which they had been familiar. The Hebrews were necessarily distressed by two main trials. They had met with a double disappointment. They were disappointed at the nature of Christianity. They were disappointed specially as to the attitude of Israel towards it.
1. The early expectations of a triumphant Return of Christ had not been fulfilled. His sufferings were not (as some at least had hoped) a mere transient phase of His work, quickly forgotten in the glory which followed. The difficulties therefore which the apostles met at the first preaching recorded in the Acts had to be met in a new form. The apostles had shewn that the Death of Christ was no obstacle to His Messiahship in view of His Resurrection and implied Return (Acts 2, 3, 5). It had to be shewn now that suffering was essential to His work. A suffering Messiah had to be accepted in His earthly reproach (Heb. 13:13; comp. 1 Cor. 1:23), while the prospect of visible triumph was withdrawn from view.
2. This was one trial. There was another also not less grievous. It became more and more clear that the Jews as a people would not receive Jesus as the Christ. Their national unbelief, apart from all direct persecution, brought with it a growing alienation of the Synagogue from the Church. It was more and more difficult to hold to both. The right of participation in the ministrations of the Temple was in process of time necessarily withdrawn from Christians if they held their faith, and they were forced to look elsewhere for that which might supply their place.
These trials from the point of sight of a Jewish Christian were most real. He could not but ask, Was there to be no Kingdom for Israel? Had God cast away His people? Were Christians to be deprived of the manifold consolations of sacrificial worship and priestly atonement? And we must at least in some degree understand their bearing before we can enter into the spirit of the Epistle.
To this end it is necessary to realise distinctly the sharp contrast between the early popular expectations of what Christianity should be, especially among Jewish converts, and what it proved to be. And it is necessary also to realise the incompleteness with which the significance of the Lord's sufferings was at first apprehended. When these points are placed in proper relief then the importance and the power of the argument in the Epistle to the Hebrews become evident. For the writer shews that the difficulty which arises from the sufferings of the Son of man (Jesus) includes the answer to the difficulty which was felt in exclusion from the Temple. The humiliation of Christ a little below the angels, over whom in essence He is supreme, gives efficacy to His continuous intercession based upon the atonement, and is for men a pledge of His unfailing sympathy. Faith in Him therefore made the outward consolations of the Temple wholly superfluous. At the same time this apprehension of Christ's redemptive and priestly work made it evident that those who clung to an external system, such as that of the Law, could not truly embrace the Gospel. The Judaism which was not in due time taken up and transfigured by the Gospel of necessity became antagonistic to it. He who remained a Jew outwardly could not but miss in the end the message of Christ, just as the Christian, who understands his position, is essentially independent of every support of the old Covenant.
By emphasising these thoughts the writer of the Epistle shews the