[Footnote 1:  [Greek:  Anto, kath anto, meth anton, monoeides.]—­PLATO:  Convivium, p. 247, Ed. Bipont.]

[Footnote 2:  Guyon:  translated by Cowper. is expressed by VAUGHAN in Works III. 85.—­A similar thought “The Eclipse.”

  “Thy anger I could kiss, and will;
  But O Thy grief, Thy grief doth kill.”]

[Footnote 3:  The sin against the Holy Ghost is unpardonable, not because there is a grade of guilt in it too scarlet to be washed white by Christ’s blood of atonement but, because it implies a total quenching of that operation of the third Person of the Trinity which is the only power adequate to the extirpation of sin from the human soul.  The sin against the Holy Ghost is tantamount, therefore, to everlasting sin.  And it is noteworthy, that in Mark iii. 29 the reading [Greek:  amartaemartos], instead of [Greek:  kriseos], is supported by a majority of the oldest manuscripts and versions, and is adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles.  “He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost.... is in danger of eternal sin.”]

THE IMPOTENCE OF THE LAW.

HEBREWS vii. 19.—­“For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh to God.”

It is the aim of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to teach the insufficiency of the Jewish Dispensation to save the human race from the wrath of God and the power of sin, and the all-sufficiency of the Gospel Dispensation to do this.  Hence, the writer of this Epistle endeavors with special effort to make the Hebrews feel the weakness of their old and much esteemed religion, and to show them that the only benefit which God intended by its establishment was, to point men to the perfect and final religion of the Gospel.  This he does, by examining the parts of the Old Economy.  In the first place, the sacrifices under the Mosaic law were not designed to extinguish the sense of guilt,—­“for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin,”—­but were intended merely to awaken the sense of guilt, and thereby to lead the Jew to look to that mercy of God which at a future day was to be exhibited in the sacrifice of his eternal Son.  The Jewish priesthood, again, standing between the sinner and God, were not able to avert the Divine displeasure,—­for as sinners they were themselves exposed to it.  They could only typify, and direct the guilty to, the great High Priest, the Messiah, whom God’s mercy would send in the fulness of time.  Lastly, the moral law, proclaimed amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, had no power to secure obedience, but only a fearful power to produce the consciousness of disobedience, and of exposure to a death far more awful than that threatened against the man who should touch the burning mountain.