s the Son
Priest, Who has been perfected for His office for ever.[73] In this
respect He bears no resemblance to Aaron. Yet God did not leave His
people without a type of Jesus in this complete separateness. The
Psalmist speaks of Him as a Priest after the order of Melchizedek, and
concerning Christ as the Melchizedek Priest the Apostle has more to say
hereafter.[74]

The question returns, How, then, can the Son of God sympathise with
sinful man? He can sympathise with our sinless infirmities because He is
true Man. But that He, the sinless One, may be able to sympathise with
sinful infirmities, He must be made sin for us and face death as a
sin-offering. The High-priest Himself becomes the sacrifice which He
offers. Special trials beset Him. His life on earth is pre-eminently
"days of the flesh,"[75] so despised is He, a very Man of sorrows. When
He could not acquire the power of sympathy by offering atonement for
Himself, because He needed it not, He _offered_ prayers and
supplications with a strong cry and tears to Him Who was able to save
Him out of death. But why the strong cries and bitter weeping? Can we
suppose for a moment that He was only afraid of physical pain? Or did He
dread the shame of the Cross? Our author elsewhere says that He despised
it. Shall we say that Jesus Christ had less moral courage than Socrates
or His own martyr-servant, St. Ignatius? At the same time, let us
confine ourselves strictly to the words of Scripture, lest by any gloss
of our own we ascribe to Christ's death what is required by the
exigencies of a ready-made theory. "Being in an agony, He prayed more
earnestly; and His sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling
down upon the ground."[76] Is this the attitude of a martyr? The Apostle
himself explains it. "Though He was a Son," to Whom obedience to His
Father's command that He should lay down His life was natural and
joyful, yet He learned His obedience, special and peculiar as it was, by
the things which He suffered.[77] He was perfecting Himself to be our
High-priest. By these acts of priestly offering He was rendering Himself
fit to be the sacrifice offered. Because there was in His prayers and
supplications, in His crying and weeping, this element of entire
self-surrender to His Father's will, which is the truest piety,[78] His
prayers were heard. He prayed to be delivered out of His death. He
prayed for the glory which He had with His Father before the world was.
A