shewing it until sin is symbolically hidden from His sight. In short, God was never other than good and gracious to Israel, but an impediment existed to the unrestrained exhibition of His goodness, which in the prescribed act of sacrifice was removed. If we ask, why this particular instrument of atonement was adopted, why "almost all things were by the Law purged with blood"," the Gospel alone supplies the answer; this is one of the points that could never have been discovered from the Law itself. Secondly, the passage which I have read seems to assert as plainly as words can do the vicarious nature of these sacrifices; so plainly, that it requires some ingenuity of reasoning to counteract the impression. The efficacy of the sacrifice is attributed especially to the blood; an idea which is also conveyed by the circumstance, that the sprinkling of the blood on or around the altar, not the slaying of the victim, was the peculiar function of the priests. The reason of this is given;-the life is in the blood. A life then, the life of the guiltless animal, was presented to God by the priest, and became, through the divine appointment, a covenanted means of cleansing from the pollution of sin. But what connexion is here traceable between means and end, unless we introduce the idea of substitution? Introduce it, and all becomes clear. The worshipper is a s Heb. ix. 22. transgressor; the penalty of the broken law is death; the death of the victim with the subsequent sprinkling of the blood exonerates from the penalty; what train of ideas can more clearly express the symbolical imputation of the offerer's sin, and its remission through the vicarious suffering and death of the victim? I do not insist upon the burning without the camp of the bodies of certain victims supposed to have from this imputation contracted pollution, for the soundness of this interpretation of the circumstance is more than doubtful"; but I may well lay stress on the imposition of hands on the victim, both because Those, namely, whose blood was brought into the sanctuary. See the following note. u See Bähr, ii. p. 397. who seems to have satisfactorily proved, that so far from the victims whose blood was brought into the sanctuary being unclean (by the imputation of sin), they, as exhibiting the sin-offering in its highest form, were peculiarly holy. Why then were they burnt without the camp, instead of being, like the other sacrifices of the same nature, eaten by the priests? The reason must be sought in the object of these sin-offerings, as compared with those of inferior power, which was, to make atonement either for the high priest's sin, as the representative of the nation, or for the sin of the whole congregation including the priests. See Levit. iv. 3. and 13. Levit. xvi. In these sacrifices therefore the priests appeared, not as priests, as mediators between the people and Jehovah, but as offerers, as themselves needing atonement, and accordingly as excluded from participation of the flesh of the victims. Under these circumstances, lest the holy flesh should, by being kept, see corruption, the whole carcase was, as the speediest mode of disposing of it, consumed in a clean place without the camp. sins are expressly said to have been thus transferred to the live goat on the day of atonement", and because the import of this ceremony both in the Old and the New Testament is well known to have been, the communication of a property from one who possessed to one who lacked it". Such are the leading ideas which seem to be embodied in the Levitical institution of sacrifice. If they have been correctly set forth, it will be obvious, that any such theories of this mode of worship as that it was a gift whereby man endeavoured to render his imperfect consecration of himself to God complete; or that it was a symbol of the surrender of the soul to God to be made partaker of His holiness; not to mention grosser conceptions, such as that of Spencer, who derives the Mosaic rites from an accommodation to the idolatrous practices of Egypt'; are, as applied at least to the Mosaic sacrifices, essentially defective: they throw into the background the ideas which in these sacrifices are most prominent, those of a broken law, of consequent guilt, of liability to punishment, and of forgiveness through vicarious suffering. II. But what shall we say was the efficacy of the Mosaic atonements? What were the sins atoned Levit. xvi. 21. Josh. xxvii. 18-20. compared with Deut. xxxiv. 9. for, and how far did the atonements extend? With some observations on this, the second point proposed for consideration, the present Lecture will be brought to a close. Two opposite views have on this subject been propounded which invite our attention. By some it is supposed that the atonements in question had reference to all sin, moral as well as ceremonial; and the language of some divines of strong Calvinistic tendencies seems even to imply, that the ancient believers enjoyed remission of sin in no less a degree than Christians do now: others That is, all such moral sins as were not by the Law expressly excluded from the benefit of atonement; for since wilful sins which seemed to involve a spirit of rebellion against Jehovah, were to be punished by excision (see Numb. xv. 30.), no party can maintain that all sins were capable of atonement by the Mosaic sacrifices. It may conduce to the better understanding of this part of the Lecture to state briefly the points at issue. Presumptuous sins then being excluded, as incapable of atonement, the two questions on which the controversy turns are, 1. Did the atonements include all other sins, moral as well as ceremonial, or did they (with a few special exceptions) apply only to ceremonial? 2. If it be supposed that they did apply to all other sins, did the atonement consist merely in a restoration to Theocratical privileges, an external cleansing (Veysie, B. L. Lect. iii.); or had it a real effect on the spiritual state of the offerer as a sinner in the sight of God? As will be seen, the present writer adopts, in both cases, the latter view; but for a fuller discussion of the subject he refers to the Note in the Appendix. The reader will find an interesting Sermon on the subject by Dr. Hawkins, printed at the end of his work on the Historical Scriptures of the Old Testament. It leaves however some difficulties untouched. b Witsius on Covenants, iii. p. 249. conceive that all sin was indeed remitted by virtue of the sacrifices, but only for a limited period, as, for example, for the interval between one day of atonement and another. Those who adopt this view, under either modification, ground their opinion on the passages in the Old Testament, in which, without any limitation to ceremonial offences, sins are said to have been by the appointed offerings atoned for. And certainly some of these are as strong as can well be imagined. Take, for example, the expressions employed in describing the ceremonial of the great day of atonement. "And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat :-and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited"." And again, at the close: "This shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year." To which may be added, that even in the case of the sin-offering, which bears more the character of having been appointed for particular ceremonial offences, it is said, "If a soul shall sin against any of the commandments of the Lord";" and that in the Epistle to the Hebrews there seems to be a kind of parallelism, as regards the kind of sins atoned for, drawn Levit. xvi. 21, 22. d Levit. xvi. 34. e Levit. iv. 2. |