rds, taken in
connection with the reference to Christ's humanity, seem to favour the
doctrine, propounded by many writers in the early ages of the Church,
that God delivered His Son to Satan as the price of man's release from
his rightful possession. Such a notion is utterly inconsistent with the
dominant idea of the Epistle: the priestly character of Christ's death.
A Hebrew Christian could not conceive the high-priest entering the
holiest place to offer a redemptive sacrifice to the spirit of evil.
Indeed, the advocates of this strange theory of the Atonement admitted
as much when they described Christ as outwitting the devil or escaping
from his hands by persuasion. But the doctrine is quite as inconsistent
with the passage before us, which represents the death of Christ as the
_destruction_ of the Evil One. Power faces power. Christ is the Captain
of salvation. His leadership of men implies conflict with their enemy
and ultimate victory. Death was a spiritual conception. Here lay its
power. Deliverance from the crushing bondage of its fear could come only
through the great High-priest. Priesthood was the basis of Christ's
power. We shall soon see that Christ is the Priest-King. The Apostle
even now anticipates what he has hereafter to say on the relation of the
priesthood to the kingly power. For as Priest Christ delivers men from
guilt of conscience and, by so doing, delivers them from their fear of
death; as King He destroys him who had the power to destroy. He is
"death of death and hell's destruction." It has been well said that the
two terrors from which none but Christ can deliver men are guilt of sin
and fear of death. The latter is the offspring of the former. When the
conscience of sin is no more, dread of death yields to peace and joy.

In these four ways is the glory of Christ connected with humiliation,
and thus will the prophecy of the Psalmist find its fulfilment in the
representative Man, Jesus. His humiliation implied propitiation, moral
discipline, conscious brotherhood, and subjection to him who had the
power of death. His glory consisted in the effectiveness of the
propitiation, in leadership of His people, in consecration of His
brethren, in the destruction of the devil.

But an interesting view of the passage has been proposed by Hofmann, and
accepted by at least one thoughtful theologian of our country. They
consider that the Apostle identifies the humiliation and the glory. In
the words of Dr