To the Christian, Christ expresses in human form what this will stands for, and so for daily life he is still felt to be the High Priest of man- kind, the touch of whose spirit polarises and renews our wills, as they come into contact with his life. The one early Christian writer who has developed for his readers the thought of Christ's priesthood, the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, sees in the earlier Jewish priesthood with which he was familiar only a somewhat imperfect type of his ideal: with thoughts turned upon the pontifical acts of Christ, which he realizes to be the keystone and crown of human history, he does not stay to consider how the priestly function may, in some measure, though imperfectly, be shared by the humblest disciple, too. Yet this thought of participation in the highest priestly work of the Master seems to have been present with the Apostle Paul when he spoke of "filling up that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ," and the same ancient [p.106] Catholic view which sees in the good deeds of the saints the continuance of Christ's work, the endless treasure flowing out from his life, would lead us also to see in their sorrows and hardships, where these have been willingly borne for the sake of God and man, a continuance of the redemptive love of the Cross. The thought of the High Priesthood of Christ is not lowered by the fact that priesthood, even in its highest mediatorial side, is to some extent shared, however faultily, by every good human life, but it is rather made intelligible to us, because it ceases to be something wholly alien from us. The life of Christ is not utterly isolated from the rest of the human race, for it could not be this and remain human; it is rather the key for the Christian to all other goodness, explaining the meaning of sacrifice, and the possibility of sorrow and pain being made steps by which men may be raised upwards towards God. And just as the supreme sacrifice of Christ cannot rightly be separated from the rest of his ministry, but rather is understood as its consummation, concentrating upon Calvary the work which was the aim of all his life, so is his High Priesthood not something foreign and separate from the life of man, but the manifestation of a principle which is at work wherever good men live and die. Yet the more truly his followers have become priests themselves, the more have they realized how imperfect their priesthood is, how deep their need to find it constantly renewed by contact with the [p.107] unique and perfect high-priesthood which they find in Christ.