Much, says the Epistle (v. 11, etc.), is to be said about Him; the theme is deep, it is inexhaustible, for He is God and Man, one Christ. And the Hebrew believers (and is it not the same with us?) are not quick to learn the great lesson of His glory, and so to grow into the adult manhood of grace. But let us try; let us address ourselves to "bear onwards ([Greek: pherometha]) to perfection" (vi. 1), in our thought, our faith, and so in our experience. The great foundation factors must be for ever there, the initial acts or attitudes of repentance, and of "faith towards God"; the abandonment of the service of sin, including the bondage of a would-be salvation of self by self, and the simple turning God-ward of a soul which has come to despair of its own resources--truths symbolized and sealed by the primal rites of baptism and blessing (vi. 2); and then the great revealed facts in prospect, resurrection and judgment, must be always remembered and reckoned with. These however must be "left" (vi. 1), not in oblivion but in progress, just as a building "leaves" the level of its always necessary foundation. We must "bear onwards" and upwards, into the upper air of the fulness of the truth of the glory of our Christ. We must seek "perfection," the profound maturity of the Christian, by a maturer and yet maturer insight into Him. Awful is the spiritual risk of any other course. The soul content to stand still is in peril of a tremendous fall. To know about salvation at all, and not to seek to develope the knowledge towards "perfection," is to expose one's self to the terrible possibility of the fate reserved for those who have much light but no love (vi. 4-9).[C] But this, by the grace of God, shall not be for the readers of the Epistle. They have shewn living proofs of love already, practical and precious, for the blessed Name's sake (vi. 10). Only, let them remember the spiritual law--the necessity of growth, of progress, of "bearing onwards to perfection"; the tremendous risks of a subtle stagnation; the looking back; the pillar of salt. [C] I make no attempt here to expound in detail the formidable words of vi. 4-8. But I believe that their purport is fairly described in the sentence above in the text. Their true scriptural illustrations are to be sought in a Balaam and a Judas.