For everyone who lives on milk is [doctrinally inexperienced and] unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a spiritual infant.

Such persons are mere babes. But solid food is for adults--that is, for those who through constant practice have their spiritual faculties carefully trained to distinguish good from evil.

Now were he on earth, he would not even be a priest, since there are here those who present the gifts according to the Law??5 those priests who serve a mere outline and shadow of the heavenly reality, just as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to build the Tabernacle. "See", he says, "that you make everything on the pattern showed you on the mountain."

and yet they officiate in a sanctuary that is a mere copy and shadow of the heavenly one, as Moses, when he was about to make the tent of worship, was warned, for, said He, "See to it that you make it all just like the pattern shown you on the mountain."

And all this looked toward the present time and was symbolic of the fact that the mere offering of material gifts and sacrifices cannot inwardly qualify the worshiper to approach God,

since they deal only with food and drink and various washings, that is, with mere material regulations which are in force only until the time of setting things straight.

For if the sprinkling of [ceremonially] defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a [burnt] heifer is sufficient for the cleansing of the body,

how much more surely will the blood of Christ, who with an eternal Spirit gave Himself a spotless offering to God, purify your consciences from works that mean mere death, to serve the ever living God?

For it was not a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, that Christ entered, but it was into heaven itself that He went, in order now to appear for us in the very presence of God.

For as the Law has a mere shadow of the bliss that is to be, instead of representing the reality of that bliss, it never can perfect those who draw near with the same annual sacrifices that are perpetually offered.

By faith we understand that the worlds were created, beautifully coordinated, and now exist, at God's command; so the things that we see did not develop out of mere matter.