Was it not after the setting up of the Christian Church, and the establishment of Christian worship? Nay, is it not in an Epistle, the very whole drift and scope of which is to contrast the usages and provisions and teaching of the elder covenant with those of the new, and to shew the superiority in each respect of that which had been ordained, not by angels, but in the hand of the Son of God Himself. {51b} And can it therefore be that the inferior part or type in the one can lack the corresponding superior part, or antitype, in the other with which it is contrasted, and on which correspondency and contrast the whole argument depends? Will any one say, Yes, but still the Jewish temple had not then been destroyed; the Jews’ visible altar and worship still existed, and it is only by (again) an adaptation, as a mode of speech particularly intelligible to the Hebrews, and by a very natural economy, that such terms were employed. But granting that the date of the Epistle is, with all probability, rightly put some little time before the destruction of Jerusalem, yet does not the very turn both of the argument and of the expression of the Apostle shew that he is not making an application of a figure, but a declaration of a fact? Addressing Hebrews, but most evidently converted Hebrews, Christians, to keep them firm in the faith, and to enlighten them to the more full understanding in it, he presses on them this point, that they have an altar; and not only so, but one distinguished from the altar of the Jew; one at which “they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.” Take the whole passage together and see its force: “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.” Where evidently the type, the great day of atonement under the law, is contrasted with its antitype, the great sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. So far it might be perhaps thought that our altar is only the cross; but then he continues: “Let us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach; for here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” {53} Here it is evident another sacrifice is to be made, even the sacrifice of praise (which we must remember is the very phrase universally used in the ancient Church for the Holy Eucharist). Let us therefore (surely we are to understand) follow after Christ, being content to bear His reproach even as we offer to Him, ourselves, our souls and bodies, in and by the sacrifice of His own appointing, the Eucharistic Sacrifice in the supper of the Lord, at the enduring Christian altar as well as table.