We know that there was a solemn meaning in the various portions of the high priest's garments, and the words inscribed on his "holy crown" leave us in no doubt as to what it symbolized. He who appeared before the Majesty of Heaven to plead for Israel, and to offer the appointed sacrifices, must be holy unto the Lord. Yet how often must the weak, fallible high priest, have been humbled by the very dignity of his office, when he contrasted his own infirmity and sin with the spotless purity symbolized by his mitre!
With heavy heart must an Aaron or an Eli have bound that holy crown on their brows, when conscious of having fallen under the displeasure of the Most High! When we think of the sacred emblem being proudly worn by a Caiaphas, its being polluted by contact with that man of blood, our Lord's image of the "whited sepulchre" rises vividly before us; how fair, pure, holy, that which was without, while the dark mind within was festering corruption!
There was but one High priest who could appear before God in innate purity, "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." It was He who wore on His bleeding temples the crown of thorns instead of the mitre; He who had HOLINESS TO THE LORD not borne aloft on His brow, but woven into every action of His life. What Aaron symbolized, that was the Lord Jesus Christ.
Before Him, arrayed in the majesty of His spotless purity, every knee shall bow, earth's proudest kings shall fall down and adore Him. "Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them."
[XII.]
The High Priest's Mitre—Continued.
THE high priest's mitre affords to us another, and a very wide field for meditation.
Under the Jewish dispensation, the priesthood was confined to one tribe, and the sacred crown was worn by one man; but since the rending of the veil that shrouded the Holy of Holies, all Christ's servants, even the lowly woman, even the feeble child, become "a royal priesthood," as well as "a peculiar people." The "crown of life" is for those—for all those who love the Lord Jesus supremely. The song of the redeemed is a chorus of thanksgiving unto Him who "hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father." Surely it is in allusion to the inscription upon Aaron's mitre that it is written of the blessed in the kingdom of Christ, "His name shall be in their foreheads," according to His own gracious promise, "I will write upon him the name of My God."
There is, even in this world, a sealing, a marking of the servants of Christ, which conveys an idea both of dignity and of consecration. Very remarkable is that passage in Ezekiel which records the vision granted to the seer of the mysterious One whose "likeness was as the appearance of fire;" and the six, each with a slaughter-weapon in his hand, who signify the ministers of God's vengeance: "The glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon He was, to the threshold of the house. And He called to the man clothed with linen . . . And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others He said . . . Go ye after him through the city, and smite . . . but come not near any man upon whom is the mark." The ministers of wrath were to spare God's people, marked as those who in the midst of a sinful generation mourned for the general corruption, and by doing so, showed that they at least valued and desired "holiness unto the Lord."