Hebrews 7:14-24 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood.… There is a deep, mystic sense in which the life that Christ lived in this world — its infancy, its development, its temptations, its solitude, its conflicts, its sufferings, its joys, its holiness, its love, its dying, its rising — all is enacted over and over again in the soul and in the experience of every individual that lives in time, nay, beyond time into eternity. Who has not sometimes traced within himself the antitype to the type of Christ's life that He lived upon this earth? What a view that gives us of the endlessness of that life which Jesus lived from Bethlehem to Bethany. And what a force there is in the fact; with what a power it must have invested, to the mind of Christ, every act, every deed, every word He spoke, as He walked His path of thirty years and three. But, apart from this mystic sense, in which the Holy Spirit re-casts in every Christian's soul every feature of his Master's life, see it more simply. Christ taught many things, and when He had taught them He passed away; but every word He said, as a precept, or a doctrine, or a promise, lives for the Church always. It stands now, and shall stand for ever, for evidence of faith or comfort to every one who is ever received into the Church's pale. Or see Christ's prayers — what were they? The first voices of that eternal intercession which goes up within the veil — beginnings ,.f petitions for His people's sake, that will never cease — spoken here, this side the horizon, for this very end, that we might all know and realise how He is praying beyond it. And Christ, with His own hands, laid the foundation of the Church. And there it stood in its safeness, its gatherings, its order, its discipline, its unity, and its mission; and it is that same Church which He laid then, which is to outlive the universe, and "the gates of hell shall never prevail against it." And Christ offered up, once for all, the sacrifice of Himself, to be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world: but once though it be for all, do not we know that there is a sense — a sense, oh! how true to the eye of faith! — in which that blood is always flowing. Wherever there is a stain of guilt felt, is it not there ready to be poured out again to wash that stain away? But the efficacy of the "power" of Christ's "endless life" does not stop here. It is the marvel of His grace that what. ver is united to Christ by that union, shares His power; and hence it is not only His prerogative, it is yours and mine — "the power of an endless life." You say a word — the word flies, and is lost, and never can be traced. But where is that word? It lives, and must live. It will meet you again. It, and all its effects — effects, it maybe, multiplying themselves into thousands and thousands, on and on, for ever and for ever. You think a thought — you receive an impression — you are conscious of a feeling. That thought, that feeling, that impression goes to make character, moral being; and that moral being is eternal; and in that eternity of being will be found again that thought, that impression, that feeling, which scarcely filled a space or occupied a moment. You do an act. It makes its little way, and that way gets marked; and so another way and another mark, in circles which have ,me centre, but no shore. You said a prayer, and there is no answer to it. But the prayer is recorded, and the record is imperishable, at the throne of God; and that prayer will live when you are dead. And who shall limit the answers, down to all generations of people? You form habits — you are always forming habits — every separate thing goes to habit — and these are to be your habits — your habits of mind and being to millions of ages. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood. |
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