ALONE WITH GOD     

This Epistle bears no name of author, or designation of church. But it needs neither. In every sentence we can detect the Authorship of the Holy Ghost: and feel that it has a message not to one age, but to all; not to one community, but to the universal Church.
    We do not therefore discuss questions which are amply treated in every commentary; but set ourselves at once to derive those great spiritual lessons which are enshrined in these sublime words.
    And probably there is no better way of vindicating the authority of the Pentateuch than by showing that it lay at the basis of the teaching of the early Church; and that especially the Book of Leviticus was the seed-plot of New Testament Theology.
    There are two strong tendencies flowing around us in the present day: the one, to minimize the substitutionary aspect of the death of Christ; the other, to exaggerate the importance of mere outward rite. To each of these the study of this great Epistle is corrective. We are taught that our Lord's death was a Sacrifice. We are taught also that we have passed from the realm of shadows into that of realities.
    These chapters are altogether inadequate for the treatment of so vast a theme; but such as they are, they are sent forth, in dependence on the Divine Blessing, in the fervent hope that they may serve to make more clear and plain to those who would find and enter it, the Way into the Holiest of all.