savage in African wilds, who has darkened even the fragment of truth which he possesses, till it has become a lie and the parent of lies.  You and I, and all our brethren, alike need a brother who shall be holy and close to God, who shall offer sacrifices for us, and bring God to us.  For you and me, and all our brethren alike, the good news is true, ’we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.’  That message quenches the fire on every other altar, and strips the mitre from every other head.  It, and it alone, meets fully and for ever that strange craving, which, though it has been productive of so many miseries and so many errors, though it has led to grinding tyranny and dark superstitions, though it has never anywhere found what it longs for, remains deep in the soul, indestructible and hungry, till it is vindicated and enlightened and satisfied by the coming of the true Priest,’ made not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.’

II.  Our text tells us, secondly, that ’the priest of the world is the king of men.’  ‘He shall be a Priest upon His throne.’

In Israel these two offices were jealously kept apart, and when one monarch, in a fit of overweening self-importance, tried to unite in his own person the kingly and the priestly functions, ’the leprosy rose up in his forehead,’ even as he stood with the censer in his hand, and ‘Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death.’  And the history of the world is full of instances, in which the struggles of the temporal and spiritual power have caused calamities only less intolerable than those which flowed from that alliance of priests and kings which has so often made monarchy a grinding tyranny, and religion a mere instrument of statecraft.  History being witness, it would seem to be a very doubtful blessing for the world that one man should wield both forms of control without check or limitation, and be at once king and priest.  If the words before us refer to any one but to Christ, the prophet had an altogether mistaken notion about what would be good for men, politically and ecclesiastically, and we may be thankful that his dream has never come true.  But if they point to the Son of David who has died for us, and declare that because He is Priest, He is therefore King—­oh! then they are full of blessed truth concerning the basis and the nature and the purpose of His dominion, which may well make us lift up our heads and rejoice that in the midst of tyranny and anarchy, of sovereignties whose ultimate resort is force, there is another kingdom—­the most absolute of despotisms and yet the most perfect democracy, whose law is love, whose subjects are every one the children of a King, the kingdom of that Priest-ruler on whose head is Aaron’s mitre, and more than David’s crown.