In my Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews I made no attempt to settle the question whether St. Paul is or is not the author of it. Now that we have considered all the other Epistles which are attributed to him, we might be better fitted to pursue that inquiry. But I still feel it, as I did when I was examining the disputed letter itself, so entirely secondary, so comparatively insignificant, that I am not willing to enter upon it, at the close of a volume which has been devoted to the immeasurably more important object of pointing out the essential agreement of the first three Gospels, of the Epistles of St. James and St. Peter, and of all the letters which we are wont to ascribe to St. Paul with each other, and with the principles that are unfolded in a book so unlike them all, in form and style, as that with which I commenced. I have wished to show that the simplest Evangelist is occupied in setting forth that Son of God and Son of Man who is the subject of the Epistle to the Hebrews; that the Evangelists, like the writer of the Epistle, look upon the acts of Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testament, not because they corresponded to certain express predictions in it, but because they manifested Him who was implied in all the Jewish institutions, Him whom the Prophets learnt from those institutions to regard as already the Mediator between God and man—the King, High Priest, Prophets, from whom all their kings, priests, prophets, derived their functions and their light; that the first three Evangelists looked upon the time in which they were living, just as the writer of the Epistle did, as the winding up of an age which was to be terminated by a signal judgment, and that they expected, as he did, that this judgment would introduce another age, the revelation of that kingdom of heaven of which their Lord had been speaking in all His discourses; that the Apostles of the circumcision, as well as the Apostle Paul, dwell upon an apostasy which was likely to precede the end, and which would, in some remarkable way, affect the Church, the Jewish nation, and the heathen world.
But if these facts prove the unity of all these writers in the New Testament, a unity arising out of their common testimony to the Son of God and to His kingdom, we have been equally obliged to acknowledge their diversity, that each Evangelist contemplated his Lord under a peculiar aspect, that St. James and St. Peter, though they are commonly classed together, had each his own character and function, that St. Paul was markedly different from both of them. It has been a great point too with us to ascertain what was his characteristical principle and work, how it is that he has seemed to be at variance with the original twelve, what it is that connects his letters together, though they are addressed to churches and persons so exceedingly dissimilar, and though each letter is manifestly adapted to those for whom it is written. I have not been at all unwilling to seek help from the name which has been given to him in all ages of the Church. He is emphatically, he declares himself to be, the teacher of the Gentiles. But that name itself requires explanation. If we take it to signify that he undervalued his Jewish calling, that he did not profit by his education at the feet of Gamaliel, that he did not invite Jews into the fold and call them to acknowledge the Son of David before he turned to Greeks or Romans, his acts, as much as his writings, will confute us. In like manner I am most thankful for the hint which is supplied by our Protestant tradition, that he, above all men, is the teacher of Justification by Faith. The unspeakable worth of that doctrine has come out to us, more and more clearly, as we have studied the Epistle to the Romans and that to the Galatians. But if we put any notion or dogma about Justification, before the revelation of Jesus Christ who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead, we found that the meaning of the Epistle to the Romans escaped us, and that the Gospel which he preached became a dead letter, not a power of God unto salvation. And if for the sake of bringing forth the Protestant or Lutheran principle into greater prominence, we overlooked these words in the Epistle to the Galatians, “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles,” the intention and coherency of that Epistle perished; and so far from having vindicated Luther, we emptied his teaching of all its life. Whereas if we took that passage as the interpreter of St. Paul’s mind and purpose, we were able to understand that he was the Apostle of the Gentiles, inasmuch as he was the Apostle of Humanity, that he was the preacher of Justification, inasmuch as he testified that Christ the Son of God and the Son of David had justified Man by rising from the dead, that the baptized Church was the witness of this Justification, that each man by believing in Him who had risen from the dead, became himself a justified and righteous man. And so the mystery which he speaks of in the Epistle to the Ephesians as hidden from ages and generations in Christ, but now as made manifest, that the Gentiles are fellowheirs and of the same body; the mystery of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, as the wisdom and power of God, as the living bond of human fellowship, which he announces to the Corinthians; the mystery of Christ’s resurrection being the object of all his strivings, as he told the Philippians it was; the mystery of Christ being in us, the hope of glory which he unfolded to the Colossians; the mystery of the unveiling of Christ as the judgment and deliverance of the world, which he set before the Thessalonians; the mystery of Christ the Mediator between God and man, the ransom for all to be declared in due time, which was to be the subject of his son Timothy’s preaching, the ground of his office, the hope of his daily life; the mystery of that kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man, by which Titus was to deliver the Cretans from their moral debasement; the mystery of Christ the Brother of man, which broke the chains of Onesimus,—belong alike to the same Pauline message, betoken not merely the same divine and universal Teacher, but the same human agent.
If, therefore, those who deny St. Paul to be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, merely rest that denial upon some peculiarities of style which they think cannot belong to the Jew of Tarsus, or upon the weight which is due to the authority of the Alexandrian fathers, and of the fathers in the West who agreed with them, or upon any points of external evidence whatsoever, I shall not argue the matter with them; partly because I am almost indifferent about the decision of the point; partly because I know how much we may be affected in the examination of such arguments by our previous habits of mind; partly because I esteem their learning much more highly than my own. But if they put forth this argument, that Paul being the Apostle of the Gentiles, was not likely to address a letter to the Hebrews, or that if he did, he was almost sure to dwell very particularly upon the calling of the Gentiles and their privileges in the Church, I put in my demurrer; I say that it is most important for the understanding of St. Paul’s mind, to remember that he looked upon his vocation to be a preacher among the Gentiles as the carrying out of the promise made to Abraham—that he adapted himself to the condition and circumstances of every people to whom he wrote—that his doctrine respecting Christ as the Man who fulfils the promise made to man, that he should have dominion over all creatures, and should be made a little lower than the angels that he might be crowned with glory and honor—is the characteristic doctrine of all his Epistles. Or if it is contended, that the Apostle Paul must have written formally about justification by faith, and would not have talked as he does in this Epistle, of kings, and priests, and sabbath-days, and the temple and the sacrifice, I protest against this objection as based upon a theory which contracts and misrepresents the purpose of all St. Paul’s writings, and makes them ineffective for the defence of that vital truth, within the formal limits of which it seeks to confine them.
This is all that I am disposed to say, on the mere question of authorship. But I cannot conclude without some allusion to those distinctive characters of this Epistle which are supposed, and rightly supposed, not to be equally prominent in any other. Although the idea of Sacrifice has been present in every letter, in every line—which we have read of St. Paul, it is quite evident that nowhere is the idea developed, as it is in this Epistle. Though I have shown, in my Lectures, that it does not stand alone, but is connected with all the institutions of the Jewish nation, the ordinary feeling that it occupies the central place among these institutions, and therefore the central place in the book which expounds them, is justified the more we reflect upon it. Though I have been careful to show that the Son of God and the Son of Man who is brought before us in the first and second chapters of the Epistle, is the subject of it, as he is of every other part of the New Testament, and that a doctrine of Sacrifice must not be substituted for Him here, more than a doctrine of Justification in the Epistle to the Romans, it is yet most obvious that this Person especially is brought before us here in His twofold character of Priest and Sacrifice, that His other characters, though not merged in these, are yet in some sense subordinate to them. Far from wishing to overlook these facts, I would earnestly call the reader’s attention to them. Whether the Epistle to the Hebrews is St. Paul’s or not, it is necessary, I think, to complete the circle of thoughts into which St. Paul introduces us. It is necessary, as showing us the deep common ground of those societies, each of which had a distinct purpose and function in God’s kingdom. It is necessary that we may understand how each nation, and the particular Church which represented its character, was connected with that one Nation, the foundations of which had been laid in God’s eternal and righteous Will, and in the surrender and sacrifice of man’s will to it. It is needful to show us, how impossible it was that the intention of that nation’s calling could be fulfilled, or that it could be reconciled with other nations, till there was some One who, being an heir of David, could say in stooping to the death which was common to the Gentile and the Jew, “Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God;” one who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, that we, being purged from dead works, might serve the living God. It was needful, that we might know how a spiritual and universal polity might be raised out of the ruins of a legal and national polity, and might in due time make each nation capable of institutions more truly divine, of a life more orderly and free, than had ever belonged to the Hebrew. It is needful, I think, that we may be able to connect the varied aspects of humanity which we find in St. Paul, with the profound and simple theology of the Apostle John, and with his vision of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, as a bride adorned for her husband.