ing into that which is within the veil;
whither as a Forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a
High-priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek."--HEB, vi. 9-20
(R.V.).

Solemn warning is followed by words of affectionate encouragement.
Impossibility of renewal is not the only impossibility within the
compass of the Gospel.[106] Over against the descent to perdition, hope
of the better things grasps salvation with the one hand and the climbing
pilgrim with the other, and makes his failure to reach the summit
impossible. Both impossibilities have their source in God's justice. He
is not unjust to forget the deed of love shown towards His name, when
the only-begotten Son ministered to men and still ministers. Contempt of
this love God will punish. Neither is He unjust to forget the love that
ministered to His poor saints in days of persecution, when the Hebrew
Christians became partakers with their fellow-believers in their
reproaches and tribulations, showed pity towards their brethren in
prisons, and took joyfully the spoiling of their goods.[107] The stream
of brotherly kindness was still flowing. This love God rewards. But the
Apostle desires them to show, not only faithfulness in ministering to
the saints, but also Christian earnestness generally,[108] until they
attain the full assurance of hope. The older expositors understand the
words to express the Apostle's wish that his readers should continue to
minister to the saints. But Calvin's view has, especially since the time
of Bengel, been generally accepted: that the Apostle urges his readers
to be as diligent in seeking the full assurance of hope as they are in
ministering to the poor. This is most probably the meaning, but with the
addition that he speaks of "earnestness" generally, not merely of active
diligence. Their religion was too narrow in range. Care for the poor has
sometimes been the piety of sluggish despondency and bigotry. But
spiritual earnestness is the moral discipline that works hope, a hope
that makes not ashamed, but leads men on to an assured confidence that
the promise of God will be fulfilled, though now black clouds overspread
their sky.

An incentive to faith and endurance will be found in the example of all
inheritors of God's promise.[109] The Apostle is on the verge of
anticipating the splendid record of the eleventh chapter. But he arrests
himself, partly because, at the present stage of his argument, he can
s