The Blessedness of the Christian Life.
A Christian Jew is writing to Christian Jews, who stand in some danger of falling back to the religion they had abandoned. This writer is here, as every one sees, contrasting the two systems, the old and the new, the law and the Gospel, with a view to show which is indeed the thing he is showing all through his letter that the step from Moses to Christ had been in every respect a step forward and upward, that everything which they appeared to lose in forsaking Moses had been more than recovered in finding Christ.
I. If on Sinai all was material and ail was alarming, in the Gospel, on the contrary, everything is spiritual, everything speaks of peace. In the first place, to the material, changeable mountain there is set in opposition the fair God-guarded city of peace, the metropolis of the saints, not a metropolis to be sought for among the sons of earth a spiritual dwelling-place for pure spirits, temple and capital in God's moral realm, that hath perchance no local habitation anywhere, yet gathereth into its ample and ordered enclosure every lowly and loving heart throughout the Almighty's moral universe. The writer pictures for us the felicity, the tranquillity, the permanence, of that vast assemblage of spiritual beings, knit into a state under the reign of God, under the law of a reconciled and gracious Father.
II. The language in which these angelic inhabitants of Sion are described here, the force of which is not well brought out by our version, suggests a vast convocation assembled on some solemn day for stately and joyous festivity. It carries with it associations of sacred leisure and rhythmic song. It recalls those lovely paradises in which the angelical painter of Fiesole has depicted the mirth of heaven, with its unfading verdure, its golden pomp, its troops of happy spirits, that proclaim their gladness in musical cadence and reverent dance.
III. Men and angels are gathered into one brotherhood; but how and where? Gathered to their common King. The name of Jesus stands last on this mighty catalogue, the crowning name to make our privilege and our blessedness complete. But in the order of your experience and God's grace it comes first of all. There shall fly back at Jesus' word He only speaks the "open sesame" of heaven the everlasting golden gates that were barred against my importunity and yours, and the meanest of us all, the worst of all for whom this Mediator's death avails, who have fled for refuge to this Surety, shall be judged worthy to walk the shining pavements of God's heavenly city, to mingle in the pure festivity of its inhabitants, and to rest for ever in the shelter of its sure defence.
J. Oswald Dykes, Sermon Year Book,vol. i., p. 183.