VII

THE KEYNOTE OF THE EPISTLE TO

THE HEBREWS

"Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God: but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin : for we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end."-HEBREWS iii. 12-14.

In

THAT Paul was the author of this Epistle to the Hebrews, was from very early times the received belief of the Eastern Church. Even scholars who had difficulties in subscribing to it unreservedly assumed its truth in their popular addresses. the West the Pauline authorship was for a couple of centuries ignored or denied; and it was not till the beginning of the fifth century that, mainly through the influence of Jerome and Augustine, the Eastern belief established itself firmly in the West. At the Reformation, with the revival of learning there revived also the difficulties which the early critics had felt as to acknowledging Paul

as the author; such as the absence of his name from any opening salutation, contrary to the practice of all his acknowledged letters, the difference in style, and still more the unlikeness of this writer's acknowledgment that he had but a secondhand knowledge of the things spoken by the Lord ("which at the first were spoken by the Lord and were confirmed unto us by them that heard him ") to Paul's claim to have himself seen our Lord, and to have derived his doctrines not from men but from the immediate instruction of his Divine Master. It was this last argument especially which weighed with Luther and Calvin, both of whom thought it likely that not Paul, but some member of his circle, such as Apollos, was the author. Since their time not only has popular opinion generally ascribed the authorship to Paul, but that opinion has had its countenance, if not its origin, in the official language of the Church. Twice in our Prayer-Book Paul is spoken of as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the title the book bears in the Authorised Version is "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews." Even in the recently revised version this title is continued, the revisers explaining in their preface that they had not been expressly directed to extend their revision to the titles. It may reasonably be doubted whether this limitation of their

commission would have been discovered by any one if they had thought proper to disregard it; but it is very intelligible that a Board of Revisers, including men who represented not only various schools of thought within our own Church, but even different denominations of Christians, might be able to arrive at tolerably unanimous conclusions on questions of grammar or even of textual criticism, but would find themselves embarked in long debates if called on to pronounce an authoritative judgment on the authorship of every one of the New Testament books; and therefore it may have been quite wisely that the entering on such questions was declined. Suffice it then to say that, notwithstanding that our Church appeared to have taken a side on this question, some of her most orthodox members have felt themselves free to separate the question of the authority of this Epistle from that of its authorship, and, on the latter question, to arrive at a conclusion adverse to the Pauline authorship. Such, I am inclined to believe, would have been the conclusion of a majority of the Board of Revisers if they had thought proper to pronounce on the question. At all events the question is a completely open one in our Church. For you will observe that this is not the case of a writer who assumes the name of Paul, and who must be pronounced guilty

of forgery if that name does not really belong to him; the claim of Pauline authorship is not made by the writer himself, and so it is no disparagement to him to inquire whether it has been rightly made for him by others.

It is not my intention, however, to enter into that inquiry now, further than may be necessary to bring out the full meaning of the passage I have taken for my text. No unprejudiced critic, I think, can read the Epistle without feeling that the Paulinism of its doctrine is unmistakable. The writer is either Paul himself, or else one who has sat at the feet of Paul; who not only agrees with him in teaching those truths which every preacher of Christianity must have published, but also who has imbibed from him all that we regard as characteristic in the Pauline method of presenting Gospel truths. Nor is it only in the substance of its doctrine that this Epistle is Pauline; the language also is so in a high degree. There are many coincidences of expression with Paul's acknowledged letters which either prove common authorship or, if they do not, at least show that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews was well acquainted with some of Paul's epistles, in particular that to the Romans. On the other hand, one cannot but be impressed by the fact of which Origen took notice, that the Greek of the Epistle

to the Hebrews is of a rhetorical character, unlike that of Paul's writings; so that even if we believe that the Apostle commissioned the writing of the Epistle, and adopted it when written, still it would be reasonable to think that he had employed in the composition the hand of some other person.

The

But it seems to me that even this suggestion of the Alexandrian critics fails to take account of what I regard as indications of a date a little later than that of the circle of Pauline writings. question of the final perseverance of the saints,— in other words, the question whether it is possible that one who is really a child of God can totally and finally fall away,—is one that has been warmly debated among Protestant theologians. Those who on this subject speak in the language of most confident assurance have always found passages in Paul's writings most apposite for quotation, such as "Being confident of this very thing that He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." But I do not know whether it has been sufficiently remarked that if one had to derive a system of doctrine from the Epistle to the Hebrews alone, controversy on the subject of which I speak could scarcely arise, for it would be determined in quite the opposite way. The danger of his disciples falling away seems to be weighing heavily on the