having shown himself as much greater than the angels as the Name that he has inherited surpasses theirs.

Thou lovest righteousness and hatest iniquity; Therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the festal oil more abundantly than thy peers.'

Thou hast made him, for a while, lower than angels; With glory and honour thou hast crowned him; Thou hast set him over all that thy hands have made;

What our eyes do see is Jesus, who was made for a while lower than angels, now, because of his sufferings and death, crowned with glory and honour; so that his tasting the bitterness of death should, in God's loving-kindness, be on behalf of all mankind.

He has been deemed worthy of far higher honour than Moses, just as the founder of the House is held in greater regard than the House itself.

We see, then, that they failed to enter upon it because of their want of faith.

Since, then, there is still a promise that some shall enter upon this Rest, and since those who were first told the Good News did not enter upon it, because of their disbelief,

There is, then, a Sabbath-Rest still awaiting God's People.

God's Message is a living and active power, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing its way till it penetrates soul and spirit--not the joints only but the very marrow--and detecting the inmost thoughts and purposes of the mind.

We have, then, in Jesus, the Son of God, a great High Priest who has passed into the highest Heaven; let us, therefore, hold fast to the Faith which we have professed.

Then you will not show yourselves slow to learn, but you will copy those who, through faith and patience, are now entering upon the enjoyment of God's promises.

Men, of course, swear by what is greater than themselves, and with them an oath is accepted as putting a matter beyond all dispute.

Consider, then the importance of this Melchizedek, to whom even the Patriarch Abraham himself gave a tithe of the choicest spoils.

If, then, Perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood--and it was under this priesthood that the people received the Law--why was it still necessary that a priest of a different order should appear, a priest of the order of Melchizedek and not of the order of Aaron?

Then again, the appointment of this new priest was ratified by an oath, which is not so with the Levitical priests,

one who has no need to offer sacrifices daily as those High Priests have, first for their own sins, and then for those of the People. For this he did once and for all, when he offered himself as the sacrifice.

The Law appoints as High Priests men who are liable to infirmity, but the words of God's oath, which was later than the Law, name the Son as, for all time, the perfect Priest.

Such, then, was the arrangement of the Tabernacle. Into the outer part priests are constantly going, in the discharge of their sacred duties;

While, then, it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly realities to be purified by such means as these, the heavenly realities themselves required better sacrifices.

for then Christ would have had to undergo death many times since the creation of the world. But now, once and for all, at the close of the age, he has appeared, in order to abolish sin by the sacrifice of himself.

and then there is added-- 'See, I have come to do thy will.' The former sacrifices are set aside to be replaced by the latter.

and has since then been waiting 'for his enemies to be put as a stool for his feet.'

then we have-- 'And their sins and their iniquities I will no longer remember.'

How much worse then, think you, will be the punishment deserved by those who have trampled underfoot the Son of God, who have treated the blood that rendered the Covenant valid--the very blood by which they were purified--as of no account, and who have outraged the Spirit of Love?

Faith made the sacrifice which Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain's, and won him renown as a righteous man, God himself establishing his renown by accepting his gifts; and it is by the example of his faith that Abel, though dead, still speaks.

It was faith that enabled Noah, after he had received the divine warning about what could not then be foreseen, to build, in reverent obedience, an ark in which to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world, and became possessed of that righteousness which follows upon faith.

For he counted 'the reproaches that are heaped upon the Christ' of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, looking forward, as he did, to the reward awaiting him.

Further, when our earthly fathers disciplined us, we respected them. Shall we not, then, much rather yield submission to the Father of souls, and live?

to Jesus, the intermediary of a new Covenant, and to the Sprinkled Blood that tells of better things than the blood of Abel.

Then his voice shook the earth, but now his declaration is-- 'Still once more I will cause not only the earth to tremble, but also the heavens.'

Do not let yourselves be carried away by the various novel forms of teaching. It is better to rely for spiritual strength upon the divine help, than upon regulations regarding food; for those whose lives are guided by such regulations have not found them of service.