he worshippers, and we know who hath
gone within the veil, having ascended up on high, that He might give
gifts unto men.

The world needs a priest. Its many attempts to find such show how deep
is the sense of need, and what he must be who shall satisfy them. We
have the Priest that the world and ourselves require. I believe that
modern Englishmen, with the latest results of civilisation colouring
their minds and moulding their characters, stand upon the very same
level, so far as this matter is concerned, as the veriest savage in
African wilds, who has darkened even the fragment of truth which he
possesses, till it has become a lie and the parent of lies. You and I,
and all our brethren, alike need a brother who shall be holy and close
to God, who shall offer sacrifices for us, and bring God to us. For you
and me, and all our brethren alike, the good news is true, 'we have a
great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of
God.' That message quenches the fire on every other altar, and strips
the mitre from every other head. It, and it alone, meets fully and for
ever that strange craving, which, though it has been productive of so
many miseries and so many errors, though it has led to grinding tyranny
and dark superstitions, though it has never anywhere found what it longs
for, remains deep in the soul, indestructible and hungry, till it is
vindicated and enlightened and satisfied by the coming of the true
Priest,' made not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the
power of an endless life.'

II. Our text tells us, secondly, that 'the priest of the world is the
king of men.' 'He shall be a Priest upon His throne.'

In Israel these two offices were jealously kept apart, and when one
monarch, in a fit of overweening self-importance, tried to unite in his
own person the kingly and the priestly functions, 'the leprosy rose up
in his forehead,' even as he stood with the censer in his hand, and
'Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death.' And the history
of the world is full of instances, in which the struggles of the
temporal and spiritual power have caused calamities only less
intolerable than those which flowed from that alliance of priests and
kings which has so often made monarchy a grinding tyranny, and religion
a mere instrument of statecraft. History being witness, it would seem to
be a very doubtful blessing for the world that one man should wield both
forms of control wi