Himself to
readjust and empower their affections and their wills. He "will put His
laws into their mind and write them upon their hearts," and "they shall
all know Him," with the knowledge which is life eternal. And further, as
the antecedent to all this, in order to open the path to it, to place
them where this wonderful blessing can rightly reach and fill them,
their King and Lawgiver pledges Himself to a _previous_ pardon, full and
unreserved; "Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more."
They shall be set before Him in an acceptance as full as if they had
never fallen. And then, not as the condition to this but as the sequel
to it, He will so deal with them, internally and spiritually, that they
shall will His will and live His law. There shall be no mechanical
compulsion; "their mind," "their hearts," full as ever of personality
and volition, shall be the matter acted upon. But there shall be a
gracious and prevailing influence, deciding their spiritual action along
its one true line; "I will put," "I will write."

This is the new, the better, the everlasting Covenant. It is placed here
in the largest and most decisive contrast over against the old covenant,
the compact of Sinai, "written and engraven in stones" (2 Cor. iii. 7).
That compact had done its mysterious work, in convincing man of his
sinful incapacity to meet the will of God. Now emerges its wonderful
antithesis, in which man is first entirely pardoned, with a pardon which
means acceptance, peace, re-instatement into the home and family of God,
and then and therefore is internally transfigured by his Father's power
into a being who loves his Father's law.

What the prophet foretold was claimed by the Lord Christ Himself, as
fulfilled in His Person and His work, when He took the cup of blessing,
at the feast of the new Passover of the new Israel, and said, "This cup
is the new covenant in my blood." And what He so claimed His great
apostle rejoiced in, when he wrote to Corinth (2 iii. 6, etc.) of the
"ministry of the new covenant," the covenant of the Spirit, of life, of
glory. And here the same truth is stated again, and in strong connexion
again with Him who is at once its Sacrifice, its Surety, its Mediator;
the Cause, and Guardian, and Giver of all its blessings. He is such that
it is such; ours is "_so great_ a salvation," because of so great and
wonderful a High Priest, the possessor in very deed of "somewhat to
offer," and now, with