y and
honor." With the best critics, we have altered the arrangement of
the clauses in the foregoing verse, to make the sense clearer. The
exact meaning is, that the exaltation of Christ to heaven after
his death authenticated his mission, showed that his death had a
divine meaning for men; that is, showed that they also should rise
to heaven. "When he had by himself made a purification of our
sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." "For
this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant, that, his death
having occurred, (for the redemption of the transgressions under
the first covenant,) they which are called might enter upon
possession of the promised eternal inheritance." The force of this
last passage, with its context, turns on the double sense of the
Greek word for covenant, which likewise means a will. Several
statements in the epistle show the author's belief that the
subjects of the old dispensation had the promise of immortal life
in heaven, but had never realized the thing itself.2 Now, he
maintains the purpose of the new dispensation to be the actual
revelation and bestowment of the reality which anciently was only
promised and typically foreshadowed; and in the passage before us
he figures Christ the author of the Christian covenant as the
maker of a will by which believers are appointed heirs of a
heavenly immortality. He then following the analogy of
testamentary legacies and legatees describes those heirs as
"entering on possession of that eternal inheritance" "by the death
of the Testator." He was led to employ precisely this language by
two obvious reasons: first, for the sake of that paronomasia of
which he was evidently fond; secondly, by the fact that it really
was the death of Christ, with the succeeding resurrection and
ascension, which demonstrated both the reality of the thing
promised in the will and the authority of the Testator to bestow
it.

All the expressions thus far cited, and kindred ones scattered
through the work, convey a clear and consistent meaning, with
sharp outlines and coherent details, if we suppose their author
entertained the following general theory; and otherwise they
cannot be satisfactorily explained. A dreadful fear of death,
introduced by sin, was tyrannizing over men. In consequence of
conscious alienation from God through transgressions, they
shuddered at death. The writer does not say what there was in
death that made it so feared; but we kn