of their neighbors.

Our view of the case is supported by the fact that Melchizedek's name
does not appear again in the whole of the Old Testament, except in the
hundred and tenth Psalm, where somebody or other (the parsons of
course say Christ) is called "a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek." Paul, or whoever wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews,
works up this hint in fine style. It would puzzle a lunatic, or a
fortune-teller, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or God Almighty
himself, to say what the Seventh of Hebrews means. We give it up as an
insoluble conundrum, and we observe that every commentator with a grain
of sense and honesty does the same. But there is one luminous flash
in the jumble of metaphysical darkness. Melchizedek is described
as "without father, without mother, without descent, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life." It will be easy to recognise a
gentleman of that description when you meet him. When we _do_ meet him
we shall readily acknowledge him as our king and priest, and pay him
an income tax of two shillings in the pound; but until then we warn all
kings and priests off our doorsteps.

Jewish traditions say that Melchizedek was the son of Shem, and set
apart for the purpose of watching and burying Adam's carcase when it
was unshipped from the Ark. Some, however, maintain that he was of a
celestial race; while other (Christian) speculators have held that he
was no less than Jesus Christ himself, who put in an early appearance
in Abraham's days to keep the Jewish pot boiling. St. Athanasius tells a
long-winded story of Melchizedek and Abraham, which shows what stuff the
early Christians believed. According to the Talmud, Melchizedek composed
the hundred and tenth Psalm himself; and although he is without end of
days, his tomb was shown at Jerusalem in the time of Gemelli Oarrere the
traveller.

There was an heretical sect called the _Melchizedekiana_ in the third
century. They held that Jesus Christ was, according to Hebrews, only of
the order of Melchizedek, and therefore that Melchizedek himself was
the more venerable. This heresy revived in Egypt after its suppression
elsewhere, and its adherents claimed that Melchizedek was the
Holy Ghost. The last time Melchizedek was heard of he was a London
coster-monger's donkey, but whether this was a real incarnation of the
original Melchizedek no one is able to decide, unless the Lord should
again, as in the case of Balaam's co