PART V. THE ATONEMENT. 1. Sacrifice, primeval and universal. 2. The Jewish sacrifices a transference of guilt and punishment. 3. One religion. Judaism prospective.— Christianity retrospective. 4. Christ a perfect Sacrifice and a perpetual Priest. 5. By Christ the law fulfiled, and its penalty paid. 6. Infinite value of Christ's death. 7. Objections to vicarious punishment. 8. The Finite not the measure of the Infinite. 9. Inadequate views of the Atonement. 10 Salvation already complete on the part of God. I. THE Custom the most universally diffused through all nations is the rite of sacrifice. Altars have been everywhere raised; fires on these altars were kept continually burning, and smoke from unnumbered offerings was in every nation, and in every age ascending towards heaven, to avert its deserved wrath, and to propitiate its favor. Sacrifice and prayer, were the remedies proposed for all evils. When any. misfortune befel the state, they immediately reflected whether any sacrifice had been omitted, any Deity left unappeased. The universality of the practice has everywhere left its traces, in the monuments, the language, and creeds of nations far dispersed, or ages ago extinct; and the notion of placating the wrath of Heaven; of an atonement for offences; of a sacrifice and of a victim, are too deeply and widely spread, ever to be eradicated by any sophistry, or to need explanation as new and unheard of terms. Being the earliest institution of the human race, the offering of sacrifice has become one of the remnants of the primeval world—a token of the common origin and interests of mankind, and preserved nearly entire by continual observance, while the traditionary fragments, of the fall of man-the loss of Eden-and the ruin of the world by a deluge, have been altered and mutilated by passing from mouth to mouth, so as often to retain but faint traces of their original. Practices are less perishable than opinions, and accordingly the heathen sacrifices strongly resemble the Jewish. In both there is the same trans ference of guilt from the offerer to the victim, indicated too by the same emblematic action, the laying the hand of the offerer upon the victim's head. Even the minute and less important circumstances of burning salt and spices along with the offering, were observed alike by both. They had alike their national sacrifices, and atoning solemnities, and the fire was kept up perpetually as the safeguard of the national welfare. Had the ancient nations however been asked whence they derived an institution so universal, they could only have referred to an antiquity too remote to be investigated, and must have traced it to those times when the immortals were the companions of men, and derived it as an institution from the immediate appointment of Heaven. The Jews alone among the nations possessed an account of its original establishment, and thus the rite of sacrifice becomes a proof of the authenticity of the intelligence which the Jewish Scriptures convey to us concerning the earliest history of man. In the Hebrew writings we have a key to the origin and meaning of the heathen sacrifices, and in Christianity we have a key to the Jewish sacrifices, and thus we may trace a connection between the rudest and most barbarous rites, and that promised Deliverer," the desire of all nations," who was to take upon him the sins of the world, and bear them in his own body on the tree. We may also trace the provision which God made for rendering Christianity, at the first hearing, intelligible to the nations among whom it was to be preached. Had not the Gentiles, from perpetually practising the rites of sacrifice, been acquainted with such terms as atonement, placation, expiation, and had not similar phrases been current in their language, the difficulty of expressing Christian truth to them, and their inaptitude to comprehend it when proclaimed, would have been much increased. By sacrifices they not only confessed their guilt, and their need of an atonement, but expressed that the guilty were spared on account of the substitution of the guiltless. II. It is clear then, that the full import of all the sacrificial rites is apparent in the Jewish institutions alone, and that while other nations had preserved the practice, they had in a great measure lost its signification, having no written comments to enforce and perpetuate the meaning of it. With the Jews the guilt which sacrifice was to expiate, was clearly defined by the laws, judgments, and statutes with which the promulgation of their expiatory ritual was accompanied. The Jewish nation were a nation of priests set apart from all physical as well as moral impurity, and the system of purifications which they continually needed, offered palpable and outward signs ever pressed upon their senses, of the guilt under which the whole human race lay, and of the atonement and moral purification which they required in all their approaches to the Holy God. Without shedding of blood the Jewish system could in no wise be carried on; the moral law, that transcript of the mind of God, as fallen creatures, the Jews could not fulfil; the ceremonial law prescribed a degree of physical purity which was equally unattainable. "A yoke," as St. Peter observes, "which 1 neither our fathers nor we were able to bear," and the whole Israelitish nation made a visible confession of their guilt, and of the impossibility of their pleasing God by their own efforts, in a continual course of sacrifices by which the guilt of the offender was transferred to the head of the innocent victim, and the wrath of heaven was appeased by the shedding of substituted blood. Without blood shed there was no way of access to the Deity. The present of a burnt offering, or the federal rite of a peace offering, equally with the more exclusive atoning sacrifice of the sin offering, marked the guilt of the worshipper, and showed that his life was only spared on account of the substitution of another. The very Hebrew term by which the sin offering is designated in the Jewish law, "it is sin," instead of, 'it is a sin offering,' shows how deeply the transference of guilt was engraven in the language itself. In the ritual observed by the priests when sending the scape-goat into the wilderness, the imputation of iniquity is very distinctly marked. "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 on the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hands of a fit man into the wilderness, and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited, and he shall let go the goat into the wilderness." Without shedding of innocent blood there was no remission to the guilty, and no approach to the Deity. "When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people, according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, this is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover, he sprinkled likewise with blood both |