CHAPTER II: ATONEMENT, PROPITIATION, AND EXPIATION.

ATONEMENT, PROPITIATION, AND EXPIATION.

IN the previous chapter, a careful investigation was made of the use or purpose of the ancient sacrifices and rites of blood, and the endeavor was, to find by what means, or in what sense, Christ is called a sacrifice, and is represented as accomplishing so much by his blood. In this investigation I passed over certain much disputed points in the institution and the Christian doctrine of sacrifice, that, in settling first the more positive questions of practical use and meaning, we might not be distracted, or confused, by multiplicities too numerous to allow the distinct settlement of any thing. We come now to the much debated and difficult questions that range under the words atonement, expiation, propitiation. These are words pertaining secondarily to sacrifice, or to the effects of sacrifice, and are commonly set in such prominence, as to be words of principal figure, not only in the doctrine, but also in the preaching of the cross. Our investigation therefore of sacrifices and the Christian sacrifice will not be complete, or satisfactory, till these ruling words and ideas are ventilated by a careful discussion.

As regards the words themselves, it may be well to note, in the first place, that the English word atonement is entirely an Old Testament word, not Two ruling conceptions. Atonement and Propitiation. occurring at all in the translation of the New, except in a single instance;
[100] where it is given as the translation of a word that is twice translated reconciliation, in the previous verse, and in every other place in the New Testament is translated reconciliation. And yet the deviation in this particular instance is less remarkable, because the English word atonement, at the time when the Scriptures were translated, meant to reconcile, that is, to at-one. And it is in this sense of making reconcilement, putting-at-one, that the word is so often used in the Old Testament. There, however, it is not so much the literal translation or transfer of the Hebrew word in its own type, as a new, though very good and proper construction, put in its place. The Hebrew word is cover, the very same root from which our English word cover is derived. Thus where we read so often, "he shall make atonement for you," "scape-goat to make atonement," and the like, it means the same thing as to make sin-cover, that is, reconciliation; the conception being, that sin is thereby covered up, hidden from sight or memory. Exactly the same thing is meant, when, using a different figure, it is said to be purged, cleansed, taken away. When the transgressor is said to be atoned or reconciled, the being covered is taken subjectively in the same way; as if something had come upon him to change his unclean state, and make him ceremonially, or, it may be, spiritually, pure.

But the subject thus atoned is not only covered or cleansed in himself, but he is figured as being put in a new relation with God, and God with him; and it is as if God were somehow changed towards him--newly inclined, mitigated, propitiated or made propitious. It resulted accordingly, that the Hebrew word to cover was very frequently translated in the Greek Septuagint, by a word that signifies to propitiate or make propitiation. And the same word occurs, in six instances in the New Testament, and under three grammatic forms; where it is translated, three times, "propitiation;" once, "to make reconciliation;" once, "be merciful;" and once, "mercy-seat;" the three latter examples having, of course, their fair equivalents, in the phrases, "make propitiation," "be propitious," and "seat of propitiation."

We have then, two ruling conceptions of sacrifice, connected with, or resulting from, the figure of a sin Both conceptions miscolored by expiation. cover; one representing the effect in us, and the other an effect in God as related to us--reconciliation [at-one-ment,] and propitiation. I shall recur to them again, at the close of the chapter, to settle more exactly their relative import, when applied to the Christian sacrifice. Meantime, another very weighty matter demands our careful attention; viz., the question of expiation.

Both these terms, atonement and propitiation, are turned from their true meaning, in our common uses, by the false idea of expiation associated with them, or entered theologically into them. To atone is no more to reconcile, that is to restore and make clean, but it is made to mean the answering for sin, making amends for it, by offering expiatory pains to obtain the discharge of it. Propitiation is made in the same way, to signify the placation of God, by a contribution of pains and expiatory sufferings. We can not therefore recover the two words, atonement and propitiation, to their true meaning, without going into a deliberate and careful investigation of the false element by which they are corrupted.

The word expiation does not once occur in the Scripture. The idea is classical, not scriptural at all, but the word has been sliding into use by the Expiation not a word of the Scriptures but of the classics. christian disciples and teachers, and getting itself accepted interchangeably for such as belong to the Scripture, till it has come to be even a considerable test of orthodoxy. I do not object to it, however, because of its origin, but because of its incurable falsity. A new word applied to christian subjects is not, of course, to be condemned, because it is new. Neither is a pagan word to be always cast out. But a word both new and pagan, made staple as in application to an old, divinely ordered, staple institution of Scripture, like that of sacrifice, must be admitted, I think, to wear a suspicious look. It should certainly have been carefully questioned, before it was baptized, into the faith, as I very much fear it was not.

But the baptism is passed and we have the word upon us. The only matter left us for inquiry therefore, relates to ideas themselves, and I propose, that I may cover the whole ground of the subject, three questions,--

I. What is expiation?

II. Is it credible as a fact under the divine government?

III. Is there any such thing as expiation supposed in the Scripture sacrifices?

I. What is expiation? It does not, I answer, simply signify the fact that God is propitiated, but it brings in the pagan, or Latin idea (for it is a Expiation is an evil given to buy the release of an evil. Latin word,) that the sacrifice offered softens God, or assuages the anger of God, as being an evil, or pain, contributed to his offended feeling. That Christ has fulfilled a mission of sacrifice, and become a reconciling power on human character, has been abundantly shown. And this change thus wrought in men, we shall also see, is the condition of a different relationship on the part of God. But an expiatory sacrifice proposes a settlement with God on a different footing; viz., that God is to be propitiated, or gained over to a new relationship, by very different means. The distinctive idea of expiation is that God is to have an evil given him by consent, for an evil due by retribution. It throws in before God or the gods some deprecatory evil, in the expectation that the wrath may be softened or averted by it. The power of the expiation depends not on the sentiments, or repentances, or pious intentions connected with it, but entirely on the voluntary damage incurred in it. According to the Latin idea, "Diis violatia expiatio debetur"--when the gods are wronged, expiation is their due--and the understanding is that, when the wrong doers fall to punishing themselves in great losses, it mitigates the wrath of the gods and turns them to the side of favor.

Now it is in this particular idea of expiation, the giving an evil to the gods, to obtain a release for other evils apprehended or actually felt, that A pagan corruption of the Jewish cultus. the sacrifices of all the heathen nations were radically distinguished from the Jewish or Scripture sacrifices. And the pagan religions were corruptions plainly enough, in this view, of the original, ante-Mosaic, ante-Jewish cultus--superstitions of degenerate brood, such as guilt, and fear, and the spurious motherhood of ignorance, have it for their law to propagate. As repentance settles into penance under this regimen of superstition, so the sacrifices settled into expiations under the same. And the process only went a little farther, when they fell, as they did the pagan world over, into the practice of human sacrifices; for since the gods were to be gained by expiatory evils, the greater the evil the more sure the favor; and therefore they sometimes offered their captives, sometimes their sons and daughters, sometimes their kings' sons, and sometimes even their kings and queens themselves; believing that in no other manner could they sufficiently placate their envious and bloody deities. Expiation figured in this manner, not as a merely casual and occasional part of religion, but as being very nearly the same thing as religion itself. For as even Tacitus could say, that "the gods interfere in human concerns, but to punish," what could they think of doing, in religion, but to expiate? The classic and all pagan sentiments of worship, being thus corrupted by the false element or infusion of expiation, the later Jewish commentators and Christian theologians finally took up the conception, laying claim to it as a worthy and genuine property in all sacrifices, whether those of the law, or even the great sacrifice of the gospel itself. And now there is nothing more devoutly asserted, or more reverently believed, than our essential need of an expiatory sacrifice, and the fact that such a sacrifice is made for our salvation, in the cross of Jesus Christ.

It is a matter of justice I gladly admit, and, for the honor of the gospel, I should even like to make the Expiation not so defined, yet so understood. concession broader still, that the advocates of Christian expiation do not define it in the terms I have given. They do not seem to have drawn their thoughts to any point close enough to yield a definition, but only understand, in general, that when they speak of expiation, they mean a bloody sacrifice. And yet they do mean, if we take their whole mental content, something more; viz., just what I have described. How we commonly use the term in other matters than religion, may be seen, for example, when we say of a murderer who has been executed, that he has expiated his crime; or of any one who has done a dishonorable deed, that the shame in which he lives, is the bitter expiation of his fault. We always show, in such modes of speaking, that the matter of the expiation is conceived to be an evil, a pain, a loss. And our religious impressions are cast in the same mold. We never speak of good deeds, or sentiments, or sacrifices of love, as expiations. Nothing is expiatory that does not turn upon the fact of damage, or pain, or self-punishment. Neither is there any difficulty in discovering, from the manner in which theologians speak of expiation, that they think of God as having some evil, or pain, or naked suffering offered him for sin, and that, on account of such offering, he may release the evil, or pain, or suffering his unsatisfied wrath would otherwise exact. Thus, taking the mildest form of superstition, it will be maintained that God's wrath is to be averted by sacrifice; that is by something given to wrath, that is wrath's proper food; which can of course be nothing but some kind of pain, or evil. Sometimes the expiation will be conceived under moral conditions, as a transaction before God's justice; the assumption being that, as God is just, he must, of course, lay upon wrong doing exactly the evil or pain it deserves, and can only release it by having other pain given him in direct substitution. Sometimes it will be conceived that God is maintaining a good law for the world, which he can do only by annexing evils, in a way of penalty, that fully express his abhorrence of sin, and that such evils can be released only by giving him others, in which he may express the same abhorrence. But in all these varieties we have plainly enough the common element of expiation; viz., an evil given for sin, which is to avail as being an evil. It is not conceived, as in the Scripture sacrifice, that the sinning man is to come bringing the choicest, most beautiful lamb of his flock, that, in offering it, he may express, and in expressing feel, something which God wants him to feel, and for his own benefit show; but the pagan idea prevails; the sacrifice it is claimed, must be an expiation--some evil brought, that is to work on God by deprecation, or self-punishment, or painful loss. Nor does the moral absurdity of putting any such heathenish construction on the Scripture sacrifices deter at all from doing it. Still, as there is sin, there must be expiation, and that is made, not by offering up a child, or a magistrate, but by the property loss of a sheep--felt as a great evil, or pain, by the soul! A kind of expiation more fit to kindle God's wrath than to soften it; for the more it is felt as an evil the meaner and more heartless the sacrifice.

Having distinguished in this manner, what an expiation is, we proceed to inquire--

II. Whether expiations for sins, taken as defined, are admissible under the divine government?

And here I do not undertake to say that nothing can be asserted under the word, which is worthy of respect and acceptance. Thus if a sinner of mankind, oppressed with a sense of inward ill-desert and shame, should seek out voluntarily some mode of expense, or pains taking, in which, considered as a punishment of himself, he might prove and express, and, by expression, exercise a clean repentance before God, and, doing Possible good sense of expiation. this, should call it making expiation for his sin, God might properly enough accept his unenlightened sacrifice; not however because of the evil brought him in it, but because the guilty sufferer came thus, trying honestly to trample his sins and put God in the right concerning them. Such uses of the word are admissible, but in the sense of expiation above defined, the sense which belongs to it whenever we speak of expiatory sacrifice, where giving God an evil not deserved, we expect Him to be placated in regard to an evil deserved,--in such a sense expiation has no character that makes it approvable by intelligence, or endurable by a true sentiment of God's worth and justice.

If it is a mere feeling in God which is to be placated by an expiatory sacrifice, then we have to ask, is God such a being that, having a good mortgage title to pain or suffering as against an offender, he will never let go the title till he gets the pain-if not from him, then from some other? Such a conception of God is simply shocking. [101]

But the title to pain, as against offenders, it will be said is simply what is demanded of them by justice, Not demanded by justice or consistent with it. and what he, as the eternal guardian of justice, is as truly bound to inflict, as they to suffer. God therefore has no option, he can not release the foredoomed evils, or pains, save as they are substituted by compensative evils. But suppose it to be so, and that God, as ruler of the world, is bound to do by every man just as he deserves. What means this inflexible adherence to the point of 4esert, when, by the supposition, he is going to accept, in expiation, an evil not deserved? He is going, in fact, to overturn all relations of desert, by taking pains not deserved, to release pains that are. Is this justice? or is it the most complete and solemn abnegation possible of justice? To get a pain out of somebody, is not justice; nothing answers to that name, but the inexorable, undivertible, straight-aimed process of execution against the person of the wrong doer himself.

So of punishment, regarded as the penalty ordained for the enforcement of law, necessary to be enforced for the honor and due authority of law. Doubtless if something better can be done, in given circumstances, than to literally execute the penalty, something that will keep the law on foot, clothe it with still higher authority, and make the dread of its penalty felt as being even more imminent than before, a qualification of vindicatory justice so prepared will do no harm. But to remit a punishment or pain deserved, in consideration of a similar punishment or pain not deserved, accepted by an innocent party, so far from being any due support of law, is the worst possible mockery of it. It belongs to the very idea of punishment, that it fall on the transgressor himself, not on any other, even though he be willing to receive it. The law reads "do this or thou shalt die," not "do this or somebody shall die." A fine, or a debt, may be paid by any body; but a punishment sticks immovably to the wrong doer, and no commutation, expiation, or transfer of places can remove it.

In the story of Zaleucus often referred to as an illustration, nothing is shown but a very sorry fraud practiced on the law. The father finding his Story of Zaleucus. son guilty of a crime, whose prescribed penalty in the law is that the malefactor shall have his eyes put out, contrives to get off his son with the loss of one eye, by consenting, in a most fond paternity, to lose one of his own eyes, in substitution for the other. But the law did not require, for its penalty, the loss of two eyes; it required the putting out of the two eyes of the transgressor; that is that he be reduced to blindness for the rest of his life. After all, this old historic myth, so often celebrated as an example of rigid and impartial justice, is only an example of bad law, or of a very tenderly parental sophistry enacted for the evasion of law.

Much better and more solidly true to law is Cromwell's answer in the case of George Fox. The facts are given by Fox himself in his Journal.
[102] He was lying Cromwell and George Fox. in prison, at the time, in a basement pit, inexpressibly filthy, called Doomsdale. And he says: "While I was in prison in Lancaster, a friend went to Oliver Cromwell and offered himself, body for body, to lie in Doomsdale in my stead, if he would take him and let me have liberty. Which thing so struck him that he said to his great men and council, which of you would do as much for me, if I were in the same condition?' And though he did not accept of the friend's offer, but said he could not do it, for that it was contrary to law, yet the truth thereby came mightily over him."

It might also be urged that, if expiation were a more feasible and better element than it is, not derogatory Trinity rightly held, excludes expiation. to the character of God, not incompatible with first principles of justice, not a way of compensating law that takes away its most essential, highest moral attribute as law; viz., the unalterable personality of its distributions--if, in all these respects, it were a morally admissible and even wholesome conception, still there is a difficulty in it, as far as the sacrifice of Christ is concerned, which is insurmountable. If the gist of that sacrifice consists in the fact, that Christ in atoning, or expiating sin by his death, offers the simple endurance of so much evil or pain, we can not but ask who is Christ, in all that gives significance to his life, but the incarnate Word of God's eternity? Take whatsoever view of Christ's person we may, no one can imagine that his sacrifice was simply a man's sacrifice, a transaction of his merely human nature. Besides the pain he suffered, that of his agony, that of his cross, was in all but the smallest, scarcely appreciable part, a moral pain, the pain of his moral sensibility,--his love, his purity, his compassionate feeling, that which it was a great part of his errand to reveal, that which not to have suffered, under such conditions, would have been a virtual disproof of his greatness and divinity. So far, at least, his pains are pains of his divine nature. Does then God's right hand offer pains to his left, and so make expiation for the sins of the world? How many Gods have we? Not any more truly three, or less simply one, because we hold the faith of a trinity. Expiation appears to suppose that we have at least two, one placating the other, and he again accepting the expiation of sins in the sufferings of the first. Faithfully holding that our God is one, expiation loses opportunity. There is no place for it; no such transaction can be had for the want of parties, and the matter is incredible as being simply impossible.

Holding now these very sufficient objections to the matter of expiation, or expiatory sacrifice, we should not expect to find it recognized in the Scriptures. Passing then to the question that remains, we inquire:

III. Is there any such thing as expiation contained, or supposed to be wrought in the Scripture sacrifices?

The common assumption is that the sin offerings of the Old Testament and the offering of Christ in the New are all expiatory, and in that fact have their value, contrary to all such impressions.

I am able, after a most thorough and complete examination of the Scriptures to affirm with confidence, No trace of expiation in the Scriptures. that they exhibit no trace of expiation. I had supposed that the impression so generally prevalent must be well grounded, but my suspicions were awakened by observing one or two points where the impression failed, and was tempted thus to push the inquiry to its limit. That such an opinion has been so long and generally held of the Scripture sacrifices, I can only account for, in the manner already suggested; viz., that there is a natural tendency in all worthy ideas of religion to lapse into such as are unworthy--repentance, for example, into doing penance--that the sacrifices could easily be corrupted in this manner, and, in fact, were by all the pagan religions; and then that there was imported back into the constructions of holy Scripture, a notion of expiation, as pertaining to sacrifice, under the plausible but unsuspected sanction of classic uses and associations. Nothing could be more natural and it appears to be actually true. Indeed it is a common thing, even now, to illustrate the manner and supposed necessity of expiation for sin, by citations from Hesiod, Homer and other classic writers.

It is impossible, of course, in a discussion of this nature, to go over a complete review of the whole series of Scripture instances and uses, but the argument will be tolerably well conceived under heads of classification such as follow.

1. That Nothing made of the victim's pains. nothing was made of the victim's death, or pain of dying, in the ancient sacrifices, was sufficiently shown in the last previous chapter.

2. Expiations are always conspicuous in their meaning. No man could even raise a doubt of the expiatory object of the pagan sacrifices; no such Expiations ought to be palpable, and are not. doubt was ever entertained. In this view, if the scripture sacrifices do not show an expiatory meaning on their face and declare themselves unmistakably in that character, if it is a matter of rational doubt or debate, such doubt is a clear presumptive evidence that their object is somehow different.

3. The original of the word atone, or make atonement, In the Hebrew scripture, carries no such idea of expiation. It simply speaks of covering, or The atonements not expiations. making cover for sin, and is sufficiently answered by any thing which removes it, hides it from the sight, brings into a state of reconciliation, where the impeachment of it is gone. Accordingly it is sometimes translated to reconcile or make reconciliation; [103] sometimes to pardon; [104] sometimes to purify, cleanse, purge. [105] It is also true that this word is sometimes translated, in the Septuagint, by the same Greek word, or a word of the same root, as that which is translated propitiation in the New Testament; and it is also true that this Greek word is often translated into Latin and English, by the word expiation. But to draw an argument from this, for the fact of expiation in the Hebrew sacrifices, is to go upon a long circuit of travel, and get nothing that amounts to evidence at the end. For the classic tongues would certainly be apt to associate expiation with sacrifice, and the Septuagint would not be likely to avoid that mistake. Every thing turns here, manifestly, on the meaning of the original- Hebrew word; and as the root or symbol of this word means simply to cover, we can see for ourselves that, while it might be applied as a figure, to denote a covering by expiation, it can certainly as well and as naturally be applied to any thing which hides or takes away transgression.

4. Atonements are accordingly said to be made, where the very idea of expiation is excluded; and Atonements that exclude expiation. sometimes where there is, in fact, no sacrifice at all. Thus atonements were made for the sanctifying of the altar; that is, for sanctifying it in men's feeling; for as it was necessary to the liturgic power of the sacrifice on the sentiment of the worshipers, that the blood of their offering should be made to be a sacred thing, so it was necessary that the altar itself should be invested with a real and felt sanctity. Thus we read,
[106] "Seven days shalt thou make an atonement for the altar, and sanctify it, and it shall be an altar most holy." To give an example where expiation is excluded because there is no sacrifice, Moses, when the people had sinned so grievously, in the matter of the golden calf, said, [107] "Now I will go ap unto the Lord, peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin." He went up accordingly and made intercession for them, in words of supplication, without any sacrifice at all and this was his atonement. Plainly enough there is no expiation in these cases. In the first there is none, because there is no sin upon the altar to be expiated, and in the second because there is no sacrifice. The atoning spoken of is a purifying, or a making reconciliation, without a possibility of expiation.

5. It is a great point that expiations, or expiatory sacrifices, are certainly not offered where we should expect them to be, if they are offered at all. Expiations not offered where we should expect them. Thus in the case just referred to of the sin of the golden calf, where the sottish convictions of the people have been roused, and their fears raised into a panic by the terrible judgment of God upon them, Moses himself speaks of the "atonement" they need for their sin; but instead of a great and solemn sacrifice of expiation, where, if ever, it was to be expected, he undertakes their case for them himself, in his own personal intercession before God. So again, in the great mutiny of the people that followed the judgment of Korah, where a deadly plague is falling upon them for their sin, Moses orders no sacrifice of expiation, but he says to Aaron [108] "Take a censer and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly into the congregation, and make atonement for them; for there is wrath gone out from the Lord." The plague is stayed; not by expiation certainly; for it is never supposed that there is any such thing as expiation by incense. And yet this was a case for expiation, if any such ever existed. We have another case like it, in the great reformation of Josiah, [109] where the sacred book is found in the temple, and the king and people, on a public reading of the book, are put in such dread of the wrath of God about to overtake them, in the curses of the book denounced upon their sin, that a grand convocation of Israel is called to avert the impending judgments. Now again is the time for a great sacrifice of expiation; and yet there is no sacrifice made, or prepared; but the king, seeing no better and surer way of deliverance, takes his position before the assembled multitudes, and requires them all to join him in a solemn covenant to forsake their evil ways, and walk in all the statutes of the book. So again, when Ezra is overtaken with great concern for the nation, on account of the general intermarriage of priests and people with idolatrous women, he betakes himself to fasting, confessing, weeping, and casting himself down before the house of God; the people also weep sore with him; but no sacrifice of expiation is offered, and no other way of averting God's anger is thought of, than a general and total forsaking of the sin; which every transgressor is required to do without equivocation or delay. [110] Now in all such cases, and they are many, we look for expiation and do not find it, and what is quite as remarkable, there is no case to be found where God's anger, in a day of guilt and fear, is placated, or even attempted to be, by a clearly expiatory sacrifice. It was not so among the pagan nations, and it could not be so here, if expiation were any recognized part of the national religion.

6. The requirement of the heart, as a condition necessary to acceptance in the sacrifices, is a very strong presumptive evidence that no idea of expiation The requirement of the heart, against expiation. belonged to sacrifice. At first, nothing appears to be said of the spirit in which the offering is to be made, though it is not to be supposed that it was ever accepted, in any but a merely ritual and ceremonial sense, unless coupled unconsciously, or implicitly, with a true feeling of repentance. As already observed, there was at first, almost no capacity of receiving truths and being exercised in states, by reflection. Spiritual impressions and results of character were to be operated for a time transactionally only, under liturgical forms of sacrifice. And a beginning made in this way, connected with a continued drill under miraculous Providences, was to operate a course of development, and prepare a more reflective capacity. By and by this will so far be accomplished, that the prophets and other teachers of the people will begin to put them in a consideration of their sentiments, and the amendment of their lives, in their sacrifices. This will bring on frequent rebukes of hypocrisy in them; and contrasts between mere heartless offerings and a genuine holiness of life, that relatively sink the importance of sacrifice, and sometimes appear to almost sink it out of sight, as a thing of little account. Indeed we are made to feel, before the prophetic era is closed up, that sacrifice is getting to be well nigh outgrown, or superseded, by a more reflective way of exercise, that is moderated and guided by truth.

Now that any such religious progress could have been accomplished under a training of expiatory sacrifice appears to be quite impossible. The giving of evils to God to obtain the release of evils, is a practice so nearly akin to superstition, so barren of all right sentiment, so little likely to stimulate habits of personal conviction, that we rather look for a lapse into fetichism under it. Such a kind of sacrifice requires nothing obviously but the placation of God by a contribution of the necessary evils, and they may as well be contributed in one feeling as another. Enough that they are forthcoming, no matter in what feeling, if only the due penance be made.. Under a plan of sacrifice contrived to work on the sentiments of the worshipers, and quicken germs of holy feeling in them, a different result might be effected,--never under sacrifices of expiation.

To bear out these strictures, and show that they are verified by facts, I will refer to only a few of the many scripture citations that might be offered. Thus, taking one example from the historic books, we find that Saul, an overgrown child of superstition, offers a sacrifice on two several occasions in his own way, disregarding God's appointed way and even his special command,--in the first instance, because, in going to battle, he wants to "make supplication to the Lord;" [111] and in the second, because, having gained a victory, he wants te honor God in a grand ovation of sacrifice--whereupon Samuel meets him in sharp rebuke, saying, [112] "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold (this appears to be an already accepted proverb,) to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

The same sentiment is reiterated many times by David, [113] testifying his readiness to yield God what is better than all sacrifice, an obedient heart. In the Psalm first -mentioned, he uses, out of his own personal feeling, just the language that is afterwards applied to Christ, [114] "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire, mine ears hast thou opened; burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O God, yea, thy law is within my breast." As if it were every thing, even at the stage of development then reached, to have God's law in the heart; sacrifices practically nothing--"The sacrifices of God a broken spirit." Isaiah holds the same sentiment in a strain of indignant rebuke, [115] --"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me saith the Lord? I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. Bring no more vain oblations. Wash you, and make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes." And for them who will receive such counsel, he adds the promise of a lustral effect or cleansing that mere expiations do not even think of--"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool." Jeremiah and Amos make the same remonstrance. [116] Micah turns the point of his rebuke directly down upon expiation itself; alluding to the manner in which the heathens offer their children, and suggesting a parallel between the superstitions of his own people in their heartless ostentations and penances of sacrifice, and the expiations of the false gods. [117] "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God."

When the Prophets, who are the preachers of the old religion, are found speaking of its rites in this way, two things are evident; first, that the rites are very much outgrown by the moral and spiritual ideas developed; and secondly, that no such growth in reflective capacity has been accomplished, under any stimulus received from the placation of God by expiatory sacrifices.

7. The uses of blood in sacrifice have no such connection with an expiatory office, as appears to be supposed in the common modes of speaking Uses of blood not expiatory. concerning it. Something we say, must bleed, sin must draw blood before it can be forgiven--"without shedding of blood there is no remission." The blood is spoken of, and the bloody rites, and the bloody sweat, and the cross dripping blood, as if some dreadful inquest were gone forth against the world, and nothing could sate the divine anger but to see blood flow for a ransom. Now all such impressions are un.. historic and exactly contrary to the scripture ideas of blood; they carry, in fact, a strong scent of superstition. There is no vindictive figure in the scripture uses of blood. It is not death, but life, that is in it. Hedged about by walls of prohibition, as regards all common uses, it is made to be a holy element to men's feeling, that when it is applied, in the offering, it may seem to purify and quicken every thing it touches. As the blood is the life, so it is to be life-giving; a symbol of God's inward purifying and regenerating baptism in the remission of sins. The associations of blood are to have no such appalling, fateful hue as expiation supposes, or as they might get from battle-fields, and scaffolds, and the stains of midnight murder; it is not to be the blood that cries to God from the ground, but the blood that speaketh better things than that of Abel--peace, forgiveness, holiness, and life. And in just this view it is, that blood becomes a type of so great significance, in the higher uses of the Christly sacrifice itself-it is used, in this manner, not because it signifies expiation, but because God's promise, and forgiving, purifying love are in it as an element of life.

8. It is a fact worthy of distinct attention, that the passover sacrifice has certainly nothing of expiation in it. The passover not expiatory. This is the sacrifice that Christ is celebrating when he institutes his supper, and the blessing of the bread and wine in this first observance of the supper is probably the closing scene of the passover observance itself. Here it is that Christ, taking the cup, says,--"This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed, for many, for the remission of sins." And again, when it is mentioned at the crucifixion, as another point of correspondence, "that it might be fulfilled, a bone of him shall not be broken," the reference made is to the passover lamb. [118] And what is a more practical evidence of the close affiliation of the passover and the work of Christ, the passing by of the destroying angel, wherever the door-posts are found sprinkled with the blood of the lamb, is a good and expressive type, or symbol, of the deliverance of souls by the blood of Christ. And yet there is clearly no thought of expiation for sin in the passover rite. It is given simply as a pledge of favor and deliverance to the people, and is continued afterwards not as an expiatory, but as a commemorative and partly festive rite. "Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day, [the passover] shall be a feast unto the Lord. And thou shalt shew thy son, in that day, saying--This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me, when I came forth out of Egypt." [119] Finding thus no reference whatever, in the rite, to an. expiation of sin, how much shall we expect to find in the grand passover grace of Christ himself, taken as a continuance of it, and represented by the Christian supper taken from it?

9. Observe in, this connection how these rites of blood, or bloody sacrifice, are connected habitually with all the most joyous and grandest religious The festivities of sacrifices against expiation. festivities. All the pomps, jubilees, historic commemorations, public reformations, national deliverances, are celebrated in rivers of blood, and lift their joy, by the smoke of burnt offerings, coupled with processions of music and shouts of praise. In this way, the sacrifices get invested with associations that make the phrase "sacrifices of joy" synonymous with sacrifice itself. Thus David celebrates the preparation made for the building of the temple, in the sacrifice of a thousand bullocks, and a thousand rams, and a thousand lambs, and the people eat and drink "before the Lord on that day, with joy and gladness." [120] Solomon again celebrates the dedication of the temple, in a grand festivity of sacrifice, continued for a whole week, in which twenty thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep are offered.
[121] Hezekiah's feast of reformation and his passover that followed,
[122] are celebrated in the same profusion of blood, and sacrifice, and joy. In all which it is sufficiently evident, that burnt offerings and rites of blood are not associated, whether in the passover institution or elsewhere, with notions of penal sanction for sin, or contributed as expiations to avert God's anger on account of it.

10. It is important, as a final consideration, to notice that, where the rite of sacrifice bears a look of expiation, and the instances are taken as facts of expiation, a closer examination shows, in every case, that the impression is not supported by the transaction. The The sacrifice of Job. sacrifice of Job for his sons may be taken as an example. As they are feasting, and as it would seem roistering in excess from day to day, he is afflicted with concern for them, and goes before God with his daily offering on their account, saying" It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." [123] But this, at most, is a supplicatory, not an expiatory offering; for he is even hoping, it will be observed, that so great sin may not have been committed; and the mere contingency of sin is certainly no fit occasion for expiation. As we just now saw, in the case of Saul, sacrifice was even commonly considered to be a way of prayer.

Besides this sacrifice of Job, I find no other historic instance or example, where there is even so much as a semblance of the expiatory character. But there is a complete day's-work of sacrifice circumstantially prescribed, a great day of atonement, sometimes called The great called day of expiation without expiation. "the great day of expiation," sometimes the day, where the remembrance of sins, once a year, is religiously observed, and where, as it is commonly believed, expiation is the simple and sole office of the observance. Here, if any where, the fact of an expiatory sacrifice will be found. I shall therefore conclude my investigation of this very important question, by a careful review of the solemnities of the day referred to, as they are detailed in the record of its institution.

It is a day specially devoted, we shall see, to the guilty and bad state of sin end the sublime need it creates of a reconciliation with God. The intention plainly is to make it the most serious and impressive day of the year; a day of strong conviction and, if possible, of hearty repentance and true turning unto God. A whole