When in the sixth chapter we have a glorious description of the strong consolation which God is willing that the heirs of promise should enjoy in the city of refuge into which they have fled, it is a heavenly refuge-cityheaven itself-into which their hope is seen to carry them, or into which their souls, in the power of hope, are spiritually carried out; which hope "enters into that within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered." When in the tenth chapter we are invited into the holiest of all now pertaining to gospel worship-analogous to the holy of holies under the law-it is manifestly heaven itself into which we are, by this heavenly calling, summoned to enter by faith: "Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near." When in the thirteenth chapter the writer asserts that ". we have an altar of which they have no right to eat that serve the tabernacle," it is assuredly no earthly altar that he has in view, but one with which a

glory, and no supplications and prayers, can come into his presence, save through the hands of the one Mediator between God and man. And this does not merely imply that, on the one hand, God has regard to the sacrifice of Jesus, and that, on the other, the worshipper directs his faith to it also. There is more implied in it than that. For the sacrifice of Christ cannot be regarded as something that has passed out of his own hands, so as that benefits may be solicited and bestowed on the ground of it, the continual personal and living intervention of Christ himself being unnecessary. No: not only does the Father dispense the blessings of the covenant on the ground of the satisfaction rendered to divine justice on the cross of Calvary; but when he does dispense those blessings, it is only through the perpetual ministry, the gracious personal intervention, and the very hands of the living High Priest himself. And not only does the acceptable worshipper proffer his faith, and love, and service through the merit of the great propitiation, but his right to do so with acceptance he recognizes as dependent on his making use of the ministry and service of the High Priest, as he personally and officially pre-heavenly and exclusively spiritual worship is connected, sents them at the throne. When we are invited to come boldly to the throne of grace, our privilege is rested on the twofold ground: first, that we have "a new and living way into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, and by the rent veil," which is to say, his flesh: and secondly, that "we have a great High Priest"-the risen Saviour himself, as the leader of our worship-"over the house of God." And assuredly no one will rise to the purity of a true heart, and to the privilege of the full assurance of an unshaken confidence, whose faith does not embrace the completeness of this double warrant for drawing near to God.

All our worship is dependent on the priesthood of Christ. Our worship, in fact, is nothing else than our communion with Christ in his priesthood. Our whole worship hinges on that priesthood: takes its colour and character, its spiritual life and substance, from it; gathers round it, and revolves about it. Inevitably the scene of his priesthood is the scene of our worship.

It is written in the opening statement of the chapter succeeding that from which our text is taken: "Then verily the first covenant had ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary." And the contrast which the apostle is carrying out between the old covenant and the new, suggests, by antithesis, the sure and implied counterpart or correlative truth, that the second covenant has ordinance of divine service, but a heavenly sanctuary as the scene of them. And this truth is either expressly asserted or implicitly involved in repeated statements throughout this epistle. When in the fourth chapter we are called on to hold fast our profession, on the ground that we have a great High Priest who has passed into the heavens-Jesus, the Son of God -it is surely the throne of God in heaven to which we are for the same reason invited to "come boldly, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

and in the virtues of which we are to offer no ceremonial, material, or sensuous sacrifice, or any worship of earthly pomp, but the pure and simple "sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of the lips." And more decisive, perhaps, than any of these, is the grand description of our churchstate and privilege under the gospel, which he expressly contrasts with that under the law; and in which he makes heaven so palpably the only scene and seat of worship, that readers are continually tempted to fancy that it is the estate of glory he is depicting, though it is manifestly our present condition under the gospel which he has in view:-"Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; but ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel."

Yes; as the holy place in the innermost recesses of Israel's temple was the recognized scene of Israel's worship under Aaron's priesthood, heaven is the scene of our worship under Christ. We enter there, indeed, in this life, only by faith. But faith's entrance is real. Faith's entrance is not fanciful, but true. We enter by no effort of imagination, but by an effort and exercise of faith; and faith has the warrant of the word, and the call of the Father, and the quickening of the Spirit, and the ministry and priesthood of the Son to proceed upon, when it enters there. And when our case is called, and our petition to be considered-if reverently we may speak of these great mysteries in terms borrowed from

the procedure of men and courts on earth-and if the | doctrine, held fast in the grasp of a living faith, a deep question is put: Who appears on behalf of these petitioners, and in support of this petition? the answer is: "Christ hath entered into heaven itself, there to appear in the presence of God for us."

darkness. Nor can we believe that their glorious, and serene, and immediate insight into the condition of the Church in heaven, could make up for the deprivation of their knowledge of the estate of the Church on earth. For there is a special glory acquired by God in carrying his Church on earth safely through its conflicts and dangers-a glory such as does not accrue to him from maintaining its unassailed peace and glory in heaven. The history and conduct of the Church triumphant is if I might use a familiar term for illustration—“ plain sailing;" plain sailing, as compared with the administration and protection of its endangered interests on earth. Its preservation, and progress, and triumph, in this dark world of sin and opposition, where Satan's battle-field is, and his chiefest powers are put forth, illustrate the wisdom and grace and power of God, in such wonderful display as heaven can afford no scope for in the same kind at all. And that our glorified brethren, through faith and patience now inheriting the promises, should be debarred from the knowledge of that manifold wisdom of God which by the Church on earth is afforded to angelic principalities and powers in heavenly places, is what we cannot be prepared to believe. I know that on such a theme it is dangerous arguing from what we are prepared to expect or not expect in God's dealings with his translated saints in heaven; yet no small reliance may surely be placed on the intuitions of spiritual faith when these fall into harmony with the general analogy of God's more largely revealed procedure. And when they find a footing, as in this case they do, in some, though it may be even small and vague, indications of Holy Scripture, they seem worthy of no small confidence being reposed in their dictates.

have. But it does not follow that they are therefore uninterested or unintelligent as to the Church's militant estate. It does not follow that they are excluded from the knowledge of the spiritual condition, the progress or reverses, the conflicts and prospects, of their brethren below. That there is nothing whatever in their present heavenly state fitted to debar them from such knowledge, is conclusively demonstrated by an express instance-as good in this case as many-namely, that of the martyred ones of Christ, whose "souls" are seen in vision "under the altar," and heard crying with a loud voice and saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." Here we see no small knowledge of what is going forward in the Church on earth possessed by souls in heaven; and it can scarcely be a too great refining on the passage if we remind you that these intelligent souls-intelligent not only in heaven's history and services, but in earth's present history and sorrows too-are represented to us as "under the altar"—the chiefest symbol and instrument of priesthood-as if to shadow forth the truth that it is on that priesthood that their intelligence in some way depends. But what I more immediately ask you to notice is, that these souls are not unaware of the aspect of affairs here below. They know that their own blood is not yet avenged. They know the slow and tardy steps of justice, as it is guided by the wisdom, and restrained by the long-suffering, of God towards their persecutors. They have intelligent confidence in that justice in the long run; but they are aware of its present delay. Nor are they checked of God for expressing their information; but rather soothed and quieted, and have their information still more enlarged.

Now, it is very true that, so far as this instance goes, it indicates only knowledge of a very limited matter; but then it is in circumstances which surely argue, among the redeemed in heaven, knowledge of earthly affairs to a far more unlimited extent. Shall the redeemed in glory see the dark side of things-the triumph and tem

It is true, we have no ground for believing that the spirits of departed believers return to earth, or revisit the scenes of their former sojourning. They "depart, and are with Christ." That they are ever present in the Church below, witnessing directly its history and movements, we have no reason to believe. With the angels indeed it is so, as the Scriptures plainly reveal. They are the immediate spectators of the Church's worship-"I charge thee before God and the elect angels, preach the word." What bands of these glori-porary impunity of the wicked,—and shall they not know ous spirits may be present in our worshipping assemblies is hidden from us; but we are commanded to preach the word as under their immediate inspection, as well as that of God himself. Nor are they mere spectators of the Church's history and worship on earth. They are servitors, as well as witnesses. Yea, "are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation?"

It is true that no such relation as this subsists between the Church on earth and the redeemed spirits of just men in heaven. Our glorified brethren, we have no reason to think, are immediate spectators of our worship now; nor have they any ministrations to discharge towards the heirs of salvation, as the angels

the brighter side, and the prosperity, and prospects, and progress of the righteous? Shall they see enough of the Church's estate to understand its bearings on their own past history and wrongs, and on their own rightful claims and vindication, and shall there be withholden from them an insight into its larger and grander bearings upon the claims and the wrongs of Christ-its bearings on his glory-on his seeing of the travail of his soul, and being satisfied? Is it consistent with the spirit of heaven that the redeemed should see the present Church on earth merely in relation to their own personal interests, and not in the more generous and enlarged conception of its relation to God and his anointed One? And when the glorified are seen to

have real and true intelligence of what passes here below, is not the question, in all that appertains to the principle of it, finally settled, and the mere extent of their knowledge after the fact of it is evident, a matter of comparatively easy solution?

the priesthood of Christ in heaven is, if I may so speak, a kind of divine dial, on which the whole history of the Church on earth may, with perfect accuracy, be read off at every moment by the redeemed brethren in heaven.

Thus much on the one side of this noble theme. And turning now to the other side, or the correlative and supplementary truth, it will be equally plain,

Secondly, That the priesthood of Christ in glory is the medium of intelligent sympathy for the Church below with the interests and worship of the Church above.

For, apart from Christ's execution of this office in

It is manifest, then, that the Church above has intelligent acquaintance, and therefore inevitable sympathy, with the Church on earth. And I think it must be plain that the great medium or organ of their knowledge is the execution in heaven of Christ's priesthood at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty there. Nor is it possible to conceive a medium more satisfac-heaven, we would be more hopelessly cut off from any tory, effective, and complete. In the eighth chapter of Revelation we have a very grand description of our Lord, in the fulfilment of a portion of his duties as our celestial High Priest. We are told that "another angel "-manifestly the Angel and Mediator of the covenant "came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne." That the spirits of just men made perfect, though not present in our assemblies and closets below, nor immediate spectators of our worship here, are present around that altar before the throne-spectators of our worship as it appears there-that is, as God sees it-we know. And it is surely easy to believe that the advantage they thus possess for understanding the condition of the Church is not less, but greater, than if they revisited it here in its militant condition. By the mediation of Christ we see them made intelligently aware of "the prayers of all saints." They become cognizant of these prayers in their combined and united fulness; not by any laboured effort of their own to piece together ten thousand isolated portions of their own knowledge of them, but after they are combined, with no omissions and no perversions, by the ministering hand of our glorious High Priest before the throne. But the "prayers of all saints" at any moment are the very best reflection and exposition of the affairs, and dangers, and prospects of the whole Church at that moment. Nothing so embodies the successes or failures-the joys and sorrows-the conflicts and conquests of the Church, as her prayers. Her history is mirrored in her prayers with perfect accuracy. Give me "the prayers of all saints," and I will tell you the condition of the Church -far more accurately than if, with the swiftness of the angels' wings and of the lightning flash, I had coursed through all her assemblies, and witnessed with eyes of flesh the estate of all her families and all her members. Give me the prayers of all saints, and I will write you a Church history such as historian never wrote.

This advantage the redeemed in heaven have by being present while the angel of the covenant offers before the throne the prayers of all saints. And if to this we add that his intercessions are with infinite accuracy grounded continually on the ever-varying estate of his people on earth, and every individual of them, we will see that

appreciable acquaintance with them, than they from us. We cannot know by what varied means God might make up the removal of such a medium or organ of knowledge to them; but we do know that there is nothing in our whole estate here below that could remedy such a loss to us. Were the worship of our departed brethren in heaven altogether dissociated from the priesthood of our Lord, we must be aware from our own experience that we could form no conception of its elements or nature, and consequently could have no real sympathy with them. Direct acquaintance with the infinite, eternal immensity of God, and direct access to communion with God therein, we cannot have. No man cometh unto the Father but by Jesus-by Jesus in the execution of his priesthood. Through the medium of that priesthood we know the aspect in which the divine nature reveals itself to us, to be adored and trusted in-to be glorified and enjoyed. We know the satisfied perfection of its infinite justice, and the satisfying and ever-ready communications of its infinite favour and fatherly and gracious complacency. We know most expressly the revealed and stipulated blessings which we may ask and expect, and the whole terms of peace and grace in which, in our unworthiness and helplessness, we may nevertheless stand towards the great God of heaven and earth. For they are laid down in a covenant, which could not more clearly or explicitly embody them than in its exceeding great and precious promises; and with sufficient spiritual light we may understand our relation and intercourse with God, and his with us-I will say far more satisfactorily, and profoundly, and convincingly, and with far less scope for error, than our relation and intercourse with one another in any of those ties whatsoever that bind us to each other here.

It is in this self-same everlasting covenant-sealed and ministered by the self-same priesthood of our celestial High Priest-that the redeemed in glory worship God. Their spiritual light and insight into their covenant with God far exceeds ours. "We see through a glass darkly;" they "face to face." Here we know in part;" they "know even as also they are known." But what they know fully above, is what we know also truly, though partially, if we have the Spirit's teaching, here below. What they see face to face is the same that we see through a glass darkly-by the help

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“LORD, LET IT ALONE THIS YEAR ALSO, TILL I SHALL DIG ABOUT IT."

LUKE Xiii. 8.