Kitabı oku: «The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews», sayfa 8

What will be the judgment on Christ’s one redemptive death? Has it been a failure? The answer is that His death and His coming into the judgment have a closer relation to men than mere similarity. He entered into the presence of God as a sin-offering. He will be proved, at His second appearing, to have put away sin. For He will appear then apart from¹⁸⁸ sin. God will pronounce that Christ’s blood has been accepted, and that His work has been finished. His acquittal will be the acquittal of those whose sins He bare in His body on the tree.

Nor will His appearing be now long delayed. It was already the end of the ages when He first appeared. Therefore look out for Him with eager expectancy¹⁸⁹ and upward gaze. For He will be once again actually beheld by human eyes, and the vision will be unto salvation.

We must not fail to note that, when the Apostle speaks in this passage of Christ’s being once offered, he refers to His death. The analogy between men and Christ breaks down completely if the death of Christ was not the offering for sin. Faustus Socinus revived the Nestorian doctrine that our author represents the earthly life and death of Jesus as a moral preparation for the priesthood which was conferred upon Him at His ascension to the right hand of God. The bearing of this interpretation of the Epistle on the Socinian doctrine generally is plain. A moral preparation there undoubtedly was, as the Apostle has shown in the second chapter. But if Christ was not Priest on earth, His death was not an atoning sacrifice. If He was not Priest, He was not Victim. Moreover, if He fills the office of Priest in heaven only, His priesthood cannot involve suffering and, therefore, cannot be an atonement. But the view is inconsistent with the Apostle’s express statement that, “as it is appointed unto men once to die, so Christ was once offered.” Of course, we cannot acquiesce in the opposite view that His death was Christ’s only priestly act, and that His life in heaven is such a state of exaltation as excludes the possibility of priestly service. For He is “a Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man,”¹⁹⁰ The death of Christ was a distinct act of priestly service. But it must not be separated from His entering into heaven. Aaron received into his hands the blood of the newly slain victim, and immediately carried the smoking blood into the holiest place. The act of offering the blood before God was as necessary to constitute the atonement as the previous act of slaying the animal. Hence it is that the shedding and the sprinkling of the blood are spoken of as one and the same action. Christ, in like manner, went into the true holiest through His death. Any other way of entering heaven than through a sacrificial death would have destroyed the priestly character of His heavenly life. But His death would have been insufficient. He must offer His blood and appear in the presence of God for us. To give men access unto God was the ultimate purpose of redemption. He must, therefore, consecrate through the veil of His flesh – a new and living way by which we may come unto God through Him.

Must we, therefore, say that Christ entered the holiest place at His death, not at His ascension? Does the Apostle refer only to the entrance of the soul into the invisible world? The question is not an easy one. If the Apostle means the Ascension, what doctrinal use does he make of the interval between the Crucifixion and the Ascension? Many of the fathers are evidently at a loss to know what to make of this interval. They think the Divine person, as well as the human soul, of Christ was conveyed to Hades to satisfy what they call the law of death. Does the Epistle to the Hebrews pass over in silence the descent into Hades and the resurrection? On the other hand, if our author means that Christ entered the holiest place immediately at His death, we are met by the difficulty that He leaves the holiest, to return finally at His ascension, whereas the Apostle has argued that Christ differs from the high-priests under the former covenant in that He does not enter repeatedly. Much of the confusion has arisen from the tendency of theologians, under the influence of Augustine, to construct their systems exclusively on the lines of St. Paul. In his Epistles atonement is a forensic conception. “Through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to the justification of life.”¹⁹¹ Consequently the death of Christ is contrasted with His present life. “For the death that He died, He died unto sin once; but the life that He liveth, He liveth unto God.”¹⁹² But our author does not put his doctrine in a Pauline framework. Instead of forensic notions, we meet with terms pertaining to ritual and priesthood. What St. Paul speaks of as law is, in his language, a covenant, and what is designated justification in the Epistle to the Romans appears here as sanctification. Conscience is purified; the worshipper is perfected. The entering of the high-priest into the holiest place is as prominent as the slaying of the victim. These are two distinct, but inseparable, parts of one priestly action. All that lies between is ignored. It is as if it were not. Christ entered into the holiest through His death and ascension to the right hand of the Majesty. But the initial and the ultimate stages of the act must not be put asunder. Nothing comes between. Our author elsewhere speaks of Christ’s resurrection as a historical fact.¹⁹³ But His resurrection does not form a distinct notion in the idea of His entrance into the holiest place.

The Apostle has spoken of the former covenant with surprising severity, not to say harshness. It was the law of a carnal commandment; it has been set aside because of its weakness and unprofitableness; it has grown old and waxed aged; it was nigh unto vanishing away. His austere language will compare with St. Paul’s description of heathenism as a bondage to weak and beggarly elements.

The root of all the mischief was unreality. Our author brings his argument to a close by contrasting the shadow and the substance, the unavailing sacrifices of the Law, which could only renew the remembrance of sins, and the sacrifice of the Son, which has fulfilled the will of God.

The Law had only a shadow.¹⁹⁴ He is careful not to say that the Law was itself but a shadow. On the contrary, the very promise includes that God will put His laws in the heart and write them upon the mind. This was one of “the good things to come.” Endless repetition of sacrifice after sacrifice year by year in a weary round of ceremonies only made it more and more evident that men were walking in a vain show and disquieting themselves in vain. The Law was holy, righteous, and good; but the manifestation of its nature in sacrifices was unreal, like the dark outline of an object that breaks the stream of light. Nothing more substantial, as a revelation of God’s moral character; was befitting or possible in that stage of human development, when the purposes of His grace also not seldom found expression in dreams of the night and apparitions of the day.

To prove the unreal nature of these ever-recurring sacrifices, the writer argues that otherwise they would have ceased to be offered, inasmuch as the worshippers, if they had been once really cleansed from their guilt, would have had no more conscience of sins.¹⁹⁵ The reasoning is very remarkable. It is not that God would have ceased to require sacrifices, but that the worshipper would have ceased to offer them. It implies that, when a sufficient atonement for sin has been offered to God, the sinner knows it is sufficient, and, as the result, has peace of conscience. The possibility of a pardoned sinner still fearing and doubting does not seem to have occurred to the Apostle. One difference apparently between the saints under the Old Testament and believers under the New is the joyful assurance of pardon which the latter receive, whereas the former were all their lifetime subject to bondage from fear of death, and that although in the one case the sacrifice was offered by the worshipper himself through the priest, but in the latter case by Another, even Christ, on his behalf. And we must not ask the Apostle such questions as these: Are we not in danger of deceiving ourselves? How is the assurance created and kept alive? Does it spring spontaneously in the heart, or is it the acceptance of the authoritative absolution of God’s ministers? Such problems were not thought of when the Epistle to the Hebrews was written. They belong to a later and more subjective state of mind. To men who cannot leave off introspection and forget themselves in the joy of a new faith, the Apostle’s argument will have little force and perhaps less meaning.

If the sacrifices were unreal, why, we naturally inquire, were they continually repeated? The answer is that there were two sides to the sacrificial rites of the old covenant. On the one hand, they were, like the heathen gods, “nothings;” on the other, their empty shadowiness itself fitted them to be a Divinely appointed means to call sins to remembrance. They represented on the one side the invincible, though always baffled, effort of natural conscience. For conscience was endeavouring to purify itself from a sense of guilt. But God also had a purpose in awakening and disciplining conscience. The worshipper sought to appease conscience through sacrifice, and God, by the same sacrifice, proclaimed that reconciliation had not been effected. The Apostle’s judgment on the subject¹⁹⁶ is not different from St. Paul’s answer to the question, What then is the Law? “It was added because of transgressions… The Scripture hath shut up all things under sin… We were kept in ward under the Law… We were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world.”¹⁹⁷ In allusion to this idea, that the sacrifices were instituted by God in order to renew the remembrance of sins every year, Christ said, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” – of Him Who hath put away sins by the sacrifice of Himself.

Such then was the shadow, at once unreal and dark. In contrast to it, the Apostle designates the substance as “the very image of the objects.” Instead of repeating the indefinite expression “good things to come,” he speaks of them as “objects,”¹⁹⁸ individually distinct, substantial, true. The image¹⁹⁹ of a thing is the full manifestation of its inmost essence, in the same sense in which St. Paul says that the Son of God’s love, in Whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins, is the image of the invisible God.²⁰⁰ Indeed, it is extremely questionable whether our author too does not refer allusively to the same truth. For, in the verses that follow, he contrasts with the sacrifices of the former covenant the coming of Jesus Christ into the world to accomplish the work which they had failed to do.²⁰¹ When the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin, inasmuch as it was an unreal atonement, God prepared a body for His own eternal Son. The Son responded to the Divine summons and, in accordance with the prophecies of Scripture concerning Him, came from heaven to earth to give Himself as the sufficient sacrifice for sin. The contrast, as heretofore, is between the vanity of animal sacrifices and the greatness of the Son, Who offered Himself. His assumption of humanity had for its ultimate end to enable the Son to do the will of God. The gracious purpose of God is to forgive sin, and this was accomplished by the infinite humiliation of the infinite Son. God’s will was to sanctify us; that is, to remove our guilt.²⁰² We have actually been thus sanctified through the one offering of the body of Jesus Christ. The sacrifices of the Law are taken out of the way in order to establish the sacrifice of the Son.²⁰³

It will be observed that the Apostle is not contrasting sacrifice and obedience. His meaning is not precisely the same as the prophet Samuel’s: that “to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”²⁰⁴ It is perfectly true that the sacrifice of the Son involved obedience, – a conscious, deliberate, willing obedience, which the beasts to be slain in sacrifice could not offer. The idea pervades these verses, as an atmosphere. But it is not the idea expressed. The dominant thoughts of the passage are the greatness of the Person Who obeyed and the greatness of the sacrifice from which His obedience did not shrink. The Son is here represented as existing and acting apart from His human nature.²⁰⁵ He comes into the world, and is not originated in the world. The Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews is identical in this vital point with that of St. Paul. The purpose of the Son’s coming is already formed. He comes to offer His body, and we have been taught in a previous chapter that He did this with an eternal spirit.²⁰⁶ For the will of God means our sanctification, in the meaning attached to the word “sanctification” in this Epistle, the removal of guilt, the forgiveness of sins. But the fulfilment of this gracious will of God demands a sacrifice, even a sacrificial death, and that not the death of beasts, but the infinite self-sacrifice and obedience unto death of the Son of God. This is implied in the expression “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ.”²⁰⁷

The superstructure of argument has been raised. Christ as High-priest has been proved to be superior to the high-priests of the former covenant. It remains only to lay the topstone in its place. This brings us back to our starting point. Jesus Christ, the eternal High-priest, is for ever King. For the priests under the Law stand while they perform the duties of their ministry.²⁰⁸ They stand because they are only priests. But Christ has taken His seat, as King, on the right hand of God.²⁰⁹ They offer the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, and wait, and wait, but in vain. Though they are priests of the true God, yet they wait, like the priests of Baal, from morning until midday is past and until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there is neither voice nor any to answer. Christ also waits, but not to renew an ineffectual sacrifice. He waits eagerly²¹⁰ to receive from God the reward of His effective sacrifice in the subjugation of His enemies. The priests under the Law had no enemies. Their persons were sacred. They incurred no hatred, inspired no love. Our High-priest goes out to war, the most hated, the most loved, of all captains of men.

The foundation of this kingly power is in two things: first, He has perfected men for ever by His one offering; second, He has put the law of God into the hearts of His people. The final conclusion is that the sacrifices of the Law have passed away, because they are no longer needed. “For where there is forgiveness, there is no more an offering for sin.”

CHAPTER IX
AN ADVANCE IN THE EXHORTATION

“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a great Priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water: let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for He is faithful that promised: and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh. For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know Him that said, Vengeance belongeth unto Me. I will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were enlightened, ye endured a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, becoming partakers with them that were so used. For ye both had compassion on them that were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your possessions, knowing that ye yourselves have a better possession and an abiding one. Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise.

 
For yet a very little while,
He that cometh shall come, and shall not tarry.
But My righteous one shall live by faith:
And if he shrink back, My soul hath no pleasure in him.
 

But we are not of them that shrink back unto perdition; but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul.” – Heb. x. 19–39 (R.V.).

The argument is closed. Christ is the eternal Priest and King, and every rival priesthood or kingship must come to an end. This is the truth won by the Apostle’s original and profound course of reasoning. But he has in view practical results. He desires to confirm the Hebrew Christians in their allegiance to Christ. We shall be better able to understand the precise bearing of his exhortation if we compare it with the appeal previously made to his readers in the earlier chapters of the Epistle.²¹¹ At the very outset he plunged into the midst of his subject and proved that Jesus Christ is Son of God and representative Man. The union in Christ of these two qualifications constituted Him a great High-priest. He is able to succour the tempted; He is faithful as a Son, Who is set over the house of God; He has experienced the bitter humiliation of life, He is perfected as our Saviour, and has passed through the heavens. The exhortation, based on these truths, is that we must lay fast hold of our confidence.

Then come the big wave, the hesitation to face it, the allegory of Melchizedek, the appeal to the prophet Jeremiah, the comparison between the old covenant and the new. But the argument triumphs and advances. Jesus not only is a great High-priest, but this is interpreted as meaning that He is Priest and King, and that His priesthood and power will never pass away. Their eternal duration involves the setting aside of every other priesthood, the destruction of every opposing force. Christ has entered into the true holiest place and enthroned Himself on the mercy-seat.

This being so, the Apostle no longer urges his readers to be confident. He now appeals to them as having confidence,²¹² in virtue of the blood of Jesus, so that they tarry not in the precincts, but enter themselves into the holiest. The high-priest alone dared enter under the former covenant, and he approached with fear and trembling, lest he also, like others before him, should fall down dead in the presence of God. The exhortation now is, not to confidence, but to sincerity.²¹³ Let their confidence become more objective. They had the boasting of hope. Let them seek the silent, unboasting assurance that is grounded on faith, on the realisation of the invisible. Instead of believing because they hoped, let them hope because they believed. In the earlier chapters the exhortation rested mainly on what Jesus was as Son over God’s house. Now, however, the Apostle speaks of Him as a great²¹⁴ Priest over God’s house. His authority over the Church springs, not only from His relation to God, but also from His relation to men. He is King of His Church because He prays for it and blesses it. Through His priesthood our hearts are cleansed by the sprinkling of His blood from the consciousness of sin.²¹⁵ But this blessing of the individual believer is now closely connected by the Apostle with the idea of the Church, over which Christ is King in virtue of His priesthood on its behalf. In addition to the cleansing of our hearts from an evil conscience, our bodies have been washed with pure water. The Apostle alludes primarily in both clauses to the rite of priestly consecration. “Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water.” He also “took of the blood which was upon the altar and sprinkled it upon Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon his sons’ garments with him, and sanctified Aaron, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons’ garments with him.”²¹⁶ The meaning of our author seems certainly to be that the worshippers have the privilege of the high-priest himself. They lose their priestly character only in the more excellent glory and greatness of that High-priest through Whom they have received their priesthood. In comparison with Him, they are but humble worshippers, and He alone is Priest. In contrast to the world around them, they also are priests of God. But the words of the Apostle contain another allusion. Both clauses refer to baptism. The mention of washing the “body” renders it, we think, unquestionable that baptism is meant. But baptism is not here said to be the antitype of the priestly consecration of the old covenant. One rite cannot be the type of another rite, which is itself an external action. The solution of this apparent difficulty is simply that both clauses together mean baptism, which is invariably represented in the New Testament as much more than an outward rite. The external act may be performed without its being a true baptism. For the meaning of baptism is the forgiveness of sin, the cleansing of the heart or innermost consciousness from guilt, and the reception of the absolved sinner into the Church of God. “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word.”²¹⁷

In an earlier chapter our author told his readers that they were the house of God if they held fast their confidence. He does not repeat it. The Church consciousness has sprung up within them. They were previously taught to look steadfastly at Jesus as the Apostle and High-priest of their confession.²¹⁸ They are now urged to look as steadfastly at one another as fellow-confessors of the same Apostle and High-priest, and to sharpen one another’s love and activity even to the point of jealousy.²¹⁹ In the earlier exhortation no mention was made of the Church assemblies. Here prominence is given them. Importance is attached to the words of encouragement addressed at these gatherings of believers. Christian habits were at this time forming and consolidating into customs of the Church. Occasional and eccentric manifestations of the religious life and temperament were yielding to the slow, normal growth of true vitality. As faithfulness in frequenting the Church assemblies began to rank among the foremost virtues, unfaithfulness would, by force of contrast, harden into habitual neglect of the house of prayer: “As the custom of some is.”²²⁰

The chief of all reasons for exhorting the readers to habitual attendance on the Church assemblies the writer of the Epistle finds in the expectation of the Lord’s speedy return. They could see for themselves that the day was at hand. The signs of the Son of man’s coming were multiplying and thrusting themselves on the notice of the Church. Perhaps the voice of Joshua, the son of Hanan, had already been heard in the streets, exclaiming, “Woe to Jerusalem!” The holy city was plainly doomed. But Christ will come to His Church, not to individuals. He will not be found in the wilderness, nor in the inner chambers. “As the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of man.”²²¹

The day of Christ is a day of judgment. The two meanings of the word “day,” – day in contrast to night, and day as a fixed time for the transaction of public business, – coalesce in the New Testament usage. The second idea seems to have gradually superseded the former.

The author proceeds to unfold the dreadful character of this day of judgment. Here, again, the precise force of his declarations will best appear by comparison with the warnings of the first part of the Epistle in reference to the sin and to the punishment.

First, the sin referred to here has a wider range than the transgression spoken of in the second chapter. For there he mentions the special sin of neglecting so great salvation. But in the present passage his words seem to imply that rejection of Christ has given birth to a progeny of evil through the self-abandonment of those who wilfully persist in sinning, as if from reckless bravado.²²² The special guilt, too, of rejecting Christ is here painted in darker hues. For in the earlier passage it is indifference; here it is contempt. In the former case it is ingratitude to a merciful Saviour; in the latter it is treason against the majesty of God’s own Son. “To trample under foot” means to desecrate. Christ is the holy High-priest of God, and is now ministering in the true holiest place. Therefore to choose Judaism, with its dead rites, and to reject the living Christ, is no longer the action of a holy zeal for God’s house. Quite the reverse. The sanctuary of Judaism has been shorn of its glory, and its sacredness transferred to the despised Nazarene. To tread under foot the Son of God is to trample with revel rout on the hallowed floor of the holiest place. Further, the Apostle’s former warnings contained no allusion to the covenant. Now he reminds his readers that they have been sanctified – that is, cleansed from guilt – through the blood of the covenant. Is the cleansing blood itself unclean? Shall we deem the reeking gore of a slain beast or the grey ashes of a burnt heifer holy, and consider the blood of the Christ, Who with an eternal spirit offered Himself without spot to God, unholy and defiling?²²³ Moreover, that eternal spirit in the Son of God is a spirit of grace²²⁴ towards men. But His infinite compassion is spurned. And thus the Apostle brings us once more²²⁵ in sight of the hopeless character of cynicism.

Second, the punishment is partly negative. A sacrifice for sins is no more left to men who have spurned the sacrifice of the Son.²²⁶ Here again we notice an advance in the thought. The Apostle told his readers before that it is impossible to renew to repentance those who crucify afresh the Son of God and put Him to an open shame. But the impossibility consists in hardness of heart and spiritual blindness. The result also is subjective, – they cannot repent. He now adds the impossibility of finding another propitiation than the offering of Christ or of finding in His offering a different kind of propitiation, seeing that He is the final revelation of God’s forgiving grace. Then, further, the punishment has a positive side. After hardness of heart comes stinging remorse, arising from a vague, but on that account all the more fearful, expectation of the judgment. The abject terror is amply justified. For the fury²²⁷ of a fire, already kindling around the doomed city, warns the Hebrew backsliders that the Christ so wilfully scoffed at is at the door. Observe the contrast. The law of Moses is on occasion set aside. The matter is almost private. Only two or three persons witnessed it.²²⁸ Its evil influence did not spread, and when the criminal was led out to be stoned to death, they who passed by went their way unheeding. The Christ of God is put to an open shame;²²⁹ the covenant, for ever established on the sure foundation of God’s oath and Christ’s death, and the spirit of all grace that filled the heart of Christ are mocked. Of how much sorer punishment shall Christ at His speedy coming deem the scorner worthy? The answer is left by the Apostle to his readers. They knew with Whom they had to do.²³⁰ It was not with angels, the swift messengers and flaming ministers of His power. It was not with Moses, who himself exceedingly feared and quaked.²³¹ It was not with the blind pressure of fate. They had to do with the living God Himself directly. He will lay upon them His living hand, – the hand that might and, if they had not spurned it, would have protected and saved. Retribution descends swift and resistless. It can only be likened to a sudden falling into the very hands of a waiting avenger.²³² He will not entrust the work of vengeance to another. No extraneous agent shall come between the smiting hand and the heart that burns with the anger of the sincere against the false, of the compassionate against the pitiless. Does not Scripture teach that the Lord will execute judgment on behalf of His people?²³³ If on behalf of His people, will He not enter into judgment for His Son?

From the terrible expectation of future judgment the Apostle turns away, to recall to his readers the grounds of hope supplied by their steadfastness in the past. He has already spoken of their work and the love which they had shown in ministering to the saints.²³⁴ God’s justice would not forget their brotherly kindness. Now, however, His purpose in bidding them remember the former days is something different. He writes to convince them that they needed no other and greater confidence to face the future than had carried them triumphantly through conflicts in days of yore. They had endured sufferings; let them conquer their own indifference and put away their cynicism with the lofty disdain of earnest faith. The courage that could do the former can also do the latter.

From the first break of day in their souls²³⁵ they had felt the confidence of men who walk, not in darkness, not knowing whither they go and fearing to take another step, but in the light, so that they trod firmly and stepped boldly onward. Their confidence was based on conviction and understanding of truth. For that reason it inspired them with the courage of athletes,²³⁶ when they had to endure also the shame of the arena. Made a gazing-stock to a scoffing theatre, they had not turned pale at the roar of the wild beasts. Instead of tamely submitting, they had turned their sufferings into a veritable contest against the world, and maintained the conflict long.²³⁷ Taunted by the spectators, torn by the lions, reproaches and afflictions alike had been ineffectual to break their spirit. When they witnessed the prolonged tortures of their brethren whose Christian life was one martyrdom,²³⁸ they had not shrunk from the like usage. They had pitied the brethren in prisons and visited them. They had taken joyfully the spoiling of their substance, knowing that now they had themselves,²³⁹ as a better and an abiding possession. If they had lost the world, they had gained for themselves their souls.²⁴⁰ As true athletes, therefore, let them not throw away²⁴¹ their sword, which is no other than their old, undaunted confidence. There was none like that sword. Their victory was assured. Their reward would be, not the plaudits of the fickle onlookers, but the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. They had need of endurance, because in enduring they were doing the will of God. But the Deliverer would be with them in a twinkling.²⁴² He had delayed His chariot wheels, but He would delay no more. Hear ye not His voice? It is He that speaks in the words of the prophet, “Those whom I deny will perish out of the way. But I have My righteous ones²⁴³ here and there, unseen by the world, and out of their faith will be wrought for them eternal life. But let even Mine own beware of lowering sail. My soul will have no delight even in him if he draws back.”