SERM. confuse the traditions of the early Church reVI. specting the Apostle himself-over the whole re SUPP. TO SERM. III. gion which bears his name in the New Testament St. Paul reigns alone, and the one character which might have been placed in competition with him in the same sphere has been swept out of it by subsequent history as if it had never existed. 66 But, whilst Alexandria itself with all that belongs to it is thus entirely, and as it were studiously thrown into the shade, as if to guard the sacred precincts from the slightest intrusion of merely human wisdom, as if to impress upon us that "the "understanding of the prudent, and the scribe and disputer of this world" had indeed no place amongst the Apostles and Evangelists of Christ; yet still, as there is a true union of philosophy and faith, which Christianity does not refuse to recognise, so there was a true union of divine and human learning even then, of which one phase at least is perpetuated in the New Testament. What there was in it purely outward and transitory has for the most part passed away with the theologians of Alexandria, who have preserved to us only its exaggerated and distorted likeness; what was compatible with the divine simplicity of Apostolical faith, may for the most part be found where the Church has always sought and recognised it, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. I. In considering the object and occasion of this Epistle, it is not necessary here to enter on the question of its origin. If the Gospels of St. Mark VI. and St. Luke, though not written by Apostles, SERM. have yet been admitted into the Sacred Volume, no one need regard the canonicity of a book as SERM. III. dependent on its authorship; if once we recognise its place in the circle of Apostolical teaching, it has an authority over us which no criticism respecting its origin can disturb. And in the case before us, quite independently of the question of its general authority, it is still less necessary to decide positively, inasmuch as whether we believe it to be or not to be the writing of Paul himself, the conclusion at which we must arrive concerning its end and spirit must be substantially the same. If in obedience to the doubts suggested by Clement, Irenæus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Caius, Origen, and in a less degree by Clement of Alexdria, Eusebius, and Jerome, we ascribe the Epistle in its present state not to the Apostle, but to one of his companions,-whether Luke, or Clement, or Barnabas, or Apollos,-we must still acknowledge that though not of Paul it is Pauline; that without the intervention of Paul it would, humanly speaking, never have been composed; that the thoughts and images are too like those of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians to be merely an accidental coincidence; that there is a certain sense in which we may thus far, in accordance with the common phraseology, regard it as the "Epistle of Paul the "Apostle to the Hebrews." If on the other hand we venture to trust in the decision of most of the writers of the Eastern Church, and the universal VI. SERM. belief which subsequently prevailed in the middle SUPP. To ages, and conjecture that it was written not only SERM. III. in the spirit but by the hand of Paul,-yet still the indications which Providence has left to guide us on its very front by the marked difference of form, style, and language, from the other Epistles which expressly claim to be by the Apostle himself, and by its confessed approximation in all these points to the Alexandrian school, must compel us to conIclude that if St. Paul himself be the author he has assumed for the time a new character; he has dropped the commanding tone of the Apostle of the Gentiles which marks the thirteen previous Epistles; he has become (to use his own phrase) "a Jew to the Jews;" he has "for their sakes' "transferred in a figure the things of Apollos to "himself;" he appears before us, not as heretofore, with independent authority, "neither by men nor through men," but "as having had the word con"firmed to him by those that first heard it;" not "with signs and wonders and mighty deeds," but as "an eloquent man', and mighty in the Scrip"tures, mightily convincing the Jews, and shewing "out of the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ." 66 Whether in short we believe that " Paul planted "and Apollos watered'," or whether we prefer to think that Paul both planted and watered, suffice it to know that in either case it is "God that gave e 1 Cor. ix. 20. Heb. ii. 3; comp. Gal. i. 1. f 1 Cor. iv. 6. h 2 Cor. xii. 12; comp. j 1 Cor. iii. 6. VI. SERM. III. "the increase:" whether we lean to the decision of SERM. the Western or the Eastern Church, we cannot go SUPP. to wrong if we acquiesce in the judgment of the profoundest of all the ancient Fathers, that amidst the conflicting theories on the subject "the real author "is known to God alone." Leaving then this question, let us proceed to examine the time, circumstances, and object, of the composition of this great Epistle. It was addressed, as its ancient and undisputed title tells us, "to the Hebrews;" that is, to that portion of the Jewish nation which spoke the Hebrew tongue, the aristocracy, if I may so speak, of the whole race, undefiled by any contamination of Grecian custom or language. Palestine, to a true Israelite, whether Hebrew or Hellenist, must still have been the home to which his national feelings turned. Jerusalem, k The style of the Epistle to the Hebrews has not the rudeness of the language of the Apostle who confessed himself to be "rude in speech, that is, in diction: but the Epistle is more purely Greek in its composition, as would be confessed by every one "who is any judge of the difference of styles. On the other hand, "that the thoughts of the Epistle are wonderful, and not inferior "to the acknowledged writings of the Apostle, would be agreed upon by every one who has paid any attention to the reading of "the Apostle. My own judgment then is that the thoughts are "the Apostle's, but the language and the composition of some 66 one who noted down the Apostle's views, (τà ảñoσtodikà,) and as it were commented as a scholiast on what had been said by "his master. If then any Church hold to this Epistle as Paul's, "let it have the credit of so doing, for it was not without reason "that the ancients have left it as Paul's. But as to who wrote "the Epistle, the truth is known to God." (Origen; ap. Eus. H. E. vi. 25.) VI. SUPP. TO SERM. to a Jewish Christian, even though he wrote from imprisonment in a distant country, would, especially SERM. III. in this its impending crisis, command the first claim on his "word of exhortation. It is still therefore the Church of St. James which we see before us, but with times and circumstances far different,St. James himself already it would seem numbered with the departed", "the end of whose conversa"tion" the Hebrews were to consider with grateful remembrance; the calamities which then only threatened them from a distance were now near at hand; the bonds of their communion were to be drawn closer and closer, "so much the more as they "saw the day approaching";" the trial of trials, which year after year had been delayed, was now brought inevitably before them—the dreadful necessity of choosing once for all between those ancient institutions, in which up to this time even Apostles had not refused to join, and that eternal polity which could alone endure the convulsion which was "to "shake not the earth only but also heaven"." The teaching of St. Paul, from the First Epistle to Thessalonica down to the latest Epistle to Timothy, had for these wants no especial meaning; the controversy of Jew with Gentile was either set at rest for ever, or at least had no concern for Heb. xiii. 22. m Heb. xiii. 7. This assumes that the date of James's death in Josephus, A.D. 63, is correct. n Heb. x. 25. Heb. xii. 26. |