τσ brought into the fanctuary, by the high દ prieft, are burnt without the camp." In proof of your opinion, you mention "Py"thagoras's hecatomb for being able to prove "the properties of a right-angled triangle: Jephtah's offering up his daughter: Baal's priests cutting themselves with knives,” to propitiate their god and, to crown all, you affert, that the God of Ifrael changed fides, when the king of Moab facrificed his fon on the walls of his city. But, fir, were not facrifices inftituted by the Almighty God? Why fhould his holy rites. and ceremonies be fet on a level with heathen profanations, Baal's priefts, and Pytha goras's idols? A facrifice is the oblation of a fenfible thing, by a lawful minifter, in honour of the Divinity, in acknowledgment of his fupreme power over life and death. Not only human victims were interdicted by the law, but even feveral animals; fuch as affes, hares, &c. Hence, Jephtah's facrifice, if he killed his daughter, was a cruel murder he was no fit prieft his daughter was no fit victim and God cannot be honoured by a breach of his own law. σε I say, “If he killed his daughter :" because, in the original Hebrew, it may as well fig nify, "devoted to the Lord:" meaning that he devoted her to perpetual chastity: as several modern critics explain it, and as it feems to be the cafe. For, infpired as he was, it is not to be prefumed that he was guilty of fuch a fatal mistake and St. Paul reckons him amongst the worthies who, by faith, obtained the promised reward. How, then, could the God of Ifrael "change "fides," by relishing the profane vapours of idolatrous blood, fmoaking, not in his honour, but in honour of the idols of the Moabites? The text you quote, " And there was great "indignation againft Ifrael," proves no more, than that the confederate kings were angry with themselves for having forced the unhappy father to plunge, as it were, the dagger in his own bowels, in the person of his fon. When, to deny propitiatory facrifices, you fay, that "God cannot be bribed or flattered," I. agree with you. But, fure, you would not control his power, nor conteft his authority, to impofe laws and obligations on his creatures; to annex to the obfervance and infraction of thofe laws, rewards and punishments, to require their fubmiffion by visible symbols; in the victim ftretched and bound on the altar, to remind them of the chains of fin, and of their ftate under their Creator's hand, who, each in ftant, ftant, can deprive them of their lives; in the fable fmoak rolling from the blazing holocauft, to make them perceive a ray of hope, directing their eyes to a diftant victim, the effusion of whose blood was to quench, one day, more active flames, and to change this fcene of carnage and mifery, into means of expiation; not indeed by the virtue and efficacy of the facrifices in themselves, but inasmuch as they typified the immolation of "the Lamb that is "flain from the foundations of the world," in the obfervance of whofe law, and in the love and knowledge of whofe perfon, confifts eternal life. Age, a variety of accidents, and the uncertainty of death, prefs our return to a merciful Redeemer. It is too late to dispute with Jefus Chrift his Divinity,-or with the foul its immortality, when the fpirit is arraigned at the awful tribunal of the Judge of the living and the dead. I have the honour to be Your affectionate fervant, ARTHUR O'LEARY. |