05.20. Appendix C.

Appendix C.—On Sacrificial Worship. THE great, and, we may say, fundamental mistake in the sounder portion of English theologians, who have written upon primitive sacrifice, has been their holding the necessity of a Divine command to prove the existence of a Divine origin. They have conceived that the absence of such a command would inevitably imply the want of such an origin. And hence the whole strength of the argument, as it has been usually conducted, is directed to show, that though no command is actually recorded, yet the facts of the case prove it to have been issued. As a specimen of this style of reasoning, we take the following from Delany:—“Nothing but God’s command could create a right to take away the lives of His creatures. And it is certain that the destruction of an innocent creature is not in itself an action acceptable to God; and therefore nothing but duty could make it acceptable, and nothing but the command of God could make it dutiful.”—(Revelation examined with Candour, vol. i., p. 136.) And so generally. Uncommanded sacrifice, it has been presumed, would necessarily have been unwarranted and unacceptable; and therefore the right to kill animals for clothing, but still more the duty of sacrificing their lives in worship, has appeared conclusively to argue the prior existence of a Divine command to use them in acts of worship. The opponents of this view, on the other hand, have maintained, and, we think, have maintained successfully, that if such a command, expressly and positively enjoining the sacrifice of animal life in worship, had actually been given, it is unaccountable that it should not have been recorded; since, to drop it from the record, if so certainly given, and so essentially necessary, as is alleged on the other side, was like leaving out the foundation of the whole edifice of primitive worship. The only warrantable conclusion we can be entitled to draw from the silence of Scripture in such a case, is, that no command of the kind was really given. So with some reason it is alleged; but when the persons who argue and conclude thus, proceed, as they invariably do, to the farther conclusion, that since there was no command, there was nothing properly Divine in the offerings of sacrificial worship, they unduly contract the boundaries of the Divine in human things, and betray, besides, an entire misapprehension of the nature of the first dispensation of God toward fallen man. This, as we have said, is distinguished by the absence of command in everything; throughout, it exhibits nothing of law in the strict and proper sense; and yet it would surely be a piece of extravagance to maintain that there were not, in the procedure of God, and in the relation man was appointed to hold toward Him, the essential grounds and materials of Divine obligation. How readily these were discovered in the Divine operations, where still there was no Divine command, may be inferred from what is written of the formation of Eve: “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman (Isha), because she was taken out of man (Ish).” He had come to know the manner of her formation; the Divine act had been disclosed to him, as it had, doubtless, been in all others in which he was personally interested, because in the act there was contained a revelation of God, involving responsibilities and duties for His creatures. “Therefore,” it is added, by way of inference from the act of God, and an inference, if not drawn on the spot by Adam, yet undoubtedly expressing the mind of God, as to what might even then have been drawn, and what actually was drawn, by the better portion of his immediate descendants, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” The act of God alone, without any accompanying command, laid the foundation for all coming time of the conjugal relation, and not only entitled, but bound men to hold, as of Divine appointment, its virtual incorporations of persons, and corresponding obligations of mutual love and fidelity. The principle that ought to be laid as the foundation of all just reasoning on such subjects, is, that whatever man can plainly learn from the revelations God gives of Himself, to be in accordance with the Divine mind and will, that is of God, and it is man’s duty to believe and act accordingly. But the issuing of authoritative commands is not the only way God has of revealing His mind and will; nor, to creatures made after His own it and even though fallen, yet capable within certain limits of understanding and imitating His procedure, is it even the first and most natural way of doing so. It is rather the manifestations which God gives of Himself in His works and ways, in which they might be expected to find the primary grounds of their faith and practice; and only when such had proved to be inadequate, might they require to be supplemented by explicit commands and stringent enactments. Holding, therefore, as we do, that the command to sacrifice was not necessary to establish the Divine authority of the rite of sacrifice,—holding, moreover, that in the Divine act of covering man’s person by the skins of slain beasts, as the symbol of his guilt being covered before God, there was an actual revelation of the mind of God in regard to His purposes of mercy and forgiveness to the sinful, precisely such as was afterwards embodied in animal sacrifice,—we can satisfactorily account for the absence of the command, and, at the same time, maintain the essentially Divine origin of the rite. And the reasoning of Davison and others, on the principle of no command, therefore no Divine authority, falls to the ground of itself as a false deduction. Of course the soundness of our own view, respecting the essentially Divine origin of sacrifice and its properly expiatory character, depends upon the correctness of the interpretation we have put upon the Divine act referred to. Davison, in common with British divines generally, regards it in a merely natural light. He sees in it simply “an instance of the Divine wisdom and philanthropy; interposing, by the dictation and provision of a more durable clothing, to veil the nakedness and cherish the modesty of our fallen nature, by sin made sensible to shame.”—(P. 24.) This he deems an object worthy of a special intervention of God, worthy also of a sacrifice of animal life to secure its accomplishment; and being so secured, he thinks it quite natural that the first pair might afterwards have felt themselves perfectly at liberty to use, for the sacred purposes of worship, what they had been taught to consider at their service for the lower purposes of corporeal clothing. This inference might certainly have been legitimate, if the premises on which it is founded had been accurately stated. But there we object. If corporeal clothing alone had been the intention of the act, it would have been the fruit of a needless interposition—the more so, as our first parents were themselves powerfully prompted to seek for clothing, and had already found a temporary relief. When the instincts and feelings of nature were manifestly so alive to the object, is it to be conceived that the ingenuity and skill which proved sufficient to accomplish so many other operations for their natural support and comfort, should have been in competent here? It is altogether incredible. On simply natural grounds, the action admits of no adequate explanation, and must ever appear above the occasion—consequently unworthy of God. Besides, how anomalous, especially in a historical revelation, which ever gives the foremost place to the moral element in God’s character and ways, if He should have appeared thus solicitous about the decent and comfortable clothing of men’s bodies, and yet have left them wholly in the dark as to the way of getting peace and quietness to their consciences?Such must have been the case with our first parents, if they were thrown entirely upon their own resources in the presentation of sacrificial offerings. And so Mr Davison himself substantially admits. For, while he endeavours to account naturally, and by means of the ordinary principles and feelings of piety, for the offering of animal life in sacrifice to God, considered simply as an expression of penitence in the offerer, or of His sense of deserved punishment for sin, he denies it could properly be regarded as an expiation or atonement of guilt; and hence postpones this higher aspect of sacrifice altogether, till the law of Moses, when he conceives it was for the first time introduced. Up till that period, therefore, sacrificial worship was but a species of natural religion; and man had no proper ground from God to expect, in answer to His offerings, the assurance of Divine pardon and acceptance. But this, we contend, had it been real, would have been anomalous. It would have been to represent God as caring originally more for the bodies than for the souls of His people; and as utterly ignoring at one period of His dealings, what at another He not only respects, but exalts to the highest place of importance. How could we vindicate the pre-eminently moral character of God’s principles of dealing, and the unchangeable nature of His administration, if He actually had been at first so indifferent in regard to the removal of guilt from the conscience, and afterwards so concerned about it as to make all religion hinge on its accomplishment? Any satisfactory vindication, in such a case, must necessarily be hopeless. But we are convinced it is not needed; the moral element is pre-eminent in God’s dealings toward men. It was this which gave its significance and worth to His act of clothing our first parents, as painfully conscious of guilt, with the skins of living creatures, whose covering of innocence was in a manner put on them. And on the ground alone of what was moral in the transaction, symbolically disclosing itself (as usual in ancient times) through the natural and corporeal, can we account for the sacrifice of slain victims becoming so soon, and continuing so long, the grand medium of acceptable communion with God. If, in so clothing man, God did mean to give indication respecting the covering of man’s guilt, and men of faith understood Him to do so, all becomes intelligible, consistent, and even comparatively plain. But if otherwise, all appears strange, irregular, and mysterious,^[166] respecting sacrifice, which will be taken up at its proper place. See vol. ii., ch. 2, sec. 5.

[166] Davison’s internal reason, as he calls it (p. 84), against the atoning character of the ante-legal oblations—that such oblations, even under the law, atoned only for ceremonial offences, which of necessity had no existence in earlier times, proceeds on a not uncommon misconception of the law of Moses

We are not disposed, in a matter of this kind, to lay much stress upon philological considerations. Yet it is not unimportant to notice, that the technical and constantly recurring expression under the law, for the design of expiatory offerings (לָכַפֵּר עָלָיו), seems to have its most natural explanation by reference to that fundamental act of God, considered in respect to its moral import. To cover upon him, as the words really mean, is so singular an expression for making an atonement for guilt, that it could scarcely have arisen without some significant fact in history naturally suggesting it.We certainly have such a fact in the circumstance of God’s covering upon our first parents with the skins of animals, slain for them, if that was intended to denote the covering of their guilt and shame, as pardoned and put away by God. The first great act of forgiveness in connection with the sacrifice of life, would thus not unfitly have supplied a sacrificial language, as well as formed the basis of a sacrificial worship. But if some collateral support may be derived from this quarter to the view we have advanced, we certainly must disclaim being indebted to another philological consideration, more commonly urged by the advocates of the Divine origin of sacrifice. We refer to the argument so much pressed by Lightfoot, Magee, and others still in the present day, and based on what is regarded as a more exact rendering of Genesis 4:7, as if it should be, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?and if thou doest not well, a sin-offering lieth at the door.” Magee calls this “the plain, natural and significant interpretation” of the words, and vindicates it at great length—more especially on three grounds: 1. That the word translated sin (חטאת) is very frequently used in the sense of sin-offering; 2. That when so used, it is usually coupled (though a feminine noun) with a verb in the masculine; and 3. That the verb connected with it here, properly has respect to an animal (רבץ), and literally denotes couching or lying down—quite appropriately said of a beast, but not so of sin. A single fact is perfectly sufficient to dispose of the whole; the fact, namely, that the Hebrew term for sin never bears the import of sin-offering till the period of the law, and could not indeed do so, as till then what were distinctively called sin-offerings were unknown. To give the passage this turn, therefore, is to put an arbitrary and unwarranted sense upon the principal word, as there used; and nothing but the high authority of such men as Lightfoot and Magee could have given it the currency which it has so long obtained in this country. The real explanation of the feminine noun being coupled with a masculine verb, is to be found in the personification of sin as a wild beast, or cunning tempter to evil. And the whole passage bears respect to the circumstances of the first temptation, and can only, indeed, be correctly understood when these are kept in view: “And Jehovah said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen?Shall there not, if thou doest good (viz., in regard to the sacrifice), be acceptance (or lifting up)?and if thou doest not good, sin coucheth at the door. And unto thee shall be its desire, and thou shalt rule over it.” The last words are simply a transference to sin, in its relation to Cain, of what was originally said of Eve in her relation to Adam (Genesis 3:16); and many Jewish (see, for example, the exposition of Sola, Lindenthall, and Raphall) as well as Christian interpreters have discerned the allusion, and had respect to it in their exposition. Our translators, however, have unhappily understood the parties spoken of to be Cain and Abel, instead of Cain and sin, and thereby greatly obscured the meaning. The object of the Divine expostulation with Cain is evidently to show him, in the first instance, that the evil he frowned at really lay with himself, in his refusing to acknowledge and serve God, as his brother did. If he would still take this course, the ground of complaint should be removed; he would find acceptance, as well as his brother. But if he refused, then there was but one alternative—he could not get rid of sin: like an evil genius, it lay couching at the door, ready to prevail over him; but it was for him to do the manly part, and assert his superiority over it. In short, he is reminded by a silent reference to the sad circumstances of the fall, that giving way to sin, as he was doing, was allowing the weaker principle of his nature (represented by the woman in that memorable transaction) to gain the ascendant, while it became him, by cleaving to the right, to keep it in subjection; and it was implied, that if he failed in this, a second fall should inevitably follow—instead of rising, he must sink.

While, however, we reject the argument commonly derived from this passage in behalf of the Divine origin of sacrifice, we derive an argument from it of another kind—viz., from the explicit manner in which it connects doing good with the acceptable presentation of sacrifice, and its representing sin as unforgiven, unsubdued, reigning in the heart and conduct, if sacrifice was not so performed. Had sacrifice not been essentially of God; had it not required the humble and childlike heart of faith to present it aright; had it not carried along with it, when so presented, the blessing of forgiveness and grace from Heaven, we cannot understand how such singular importance should have been attached to it. Like the sacrifice of Christ now, it has all the appearance of having then been the great touchstone of an accepted and blessed, or a guilty and rejected condition; not one of many, as it would have been if devised by man, but standing comparatively alone as an all-important ordinance of God.

Appendix C.—On Sacrificial Worship. THE great, and, we may say, fundamental mistake in the sounder portion of English theologians, who have written upon primitive sacrifice, has been their holding the necessity of a Divine command to prove the existence of a Divine origin. They have conceived that the absence of such a command would inevitably imply the want of such an origin. And hence the whole strength of the argument, as it has been usually conducted, is directed to show, that though no command is actually recorded, yet the facts of the case prove it to have been issued. As a specimen of this style of reasoning, we take the following from Delany:—“Nothing but God’s command could create a right to take away the lives of His creatures. And it is certain that the destruction of an innocent creature is not in itself an action acceptable to God; and therefore nothing but duty could make it acceptable, and nothing but the command of God could make it dutiful.”—(Revelation examined with Candour, vol. i., p. 136.) And so generally. Uncommanded sacrifice, it has been presumed, would necessarily have been unwarranted and unacceptable; and therefore the right to kill animals for clothing, but still more the duty of sacrificing their lives in worship, has appeared conclusively to argue the prior existence of a Divine command to use them in acts of worship. The opponents of this view, on the other hand, have maintained, and, we think, have maintained successfully, that if such a command, expressly and positively enjoining the sacrifice of animal life in worship, had actually been given, it is unaccountable that it should not have been recorded; since, to drop it from the record, if so certainly given, and so essentially necessary, as is alleged on the other side, was like leaving out the foundation of the whole edifice of primitive worship. The only warrantable conclusion we can be entitled to draw from the silence of Scripture in such a case, is, that no command of the kind was really given. So with some reason it is alleged; but when the persons who argue and conclude thus, proceed, as they invariably do, to the farther conclusion, that since there was no command, there was nothing properly Divine in the offerings of sacrificial worship, they unduly contract the boundaries of the Divine in human things, and betray, besides, an entire misapprehension of the nature of the first dispensation of God toward fallen man. This, as we have said, is distinguished by the absence of command in everything; throughout, it exhibits nothing of law in the strict and proper sense; and yet it would surely be a piece of extravagance to maintain that there were not, in the procedure of God, and in the relation man was appointed to hold toward Him, the essential grounds and materials of Divine obligation. How readily these were discovered in the Divine operations, where still there was no Divine command, may be inferred from what is written of the formation of Eve: “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman (Isha), because she was taken out of man (Ish).” He had come to know the manner of her formation; the Divine act had been disclosed to him, as it had, doubtless, been in all others in which he was personally interested, because in the act there was contained a revelation of God, involving responsibilities and duties for His creatures. “Therefore,” it is added, by way of inference from the act of God, and an inference, if not drawn on the spot by Adam, yet undoubtedly expressing the mind of God, as to what might even then have been drawn, and what actually was drawn, by the better portion of his immediate descendants, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” The act of God alone, without any accompanying command, laid the foundation for all coming time of the conjugal relation, and not only entitled, but bound men to hold, as of Divine appointment, its virtual incorporations of persons, and corresponding obligations of mutual love and fidelity. The principle that ought to be laid as the foundation of all just reasoning on such subjects, is, that whatever man can plainly learn from the revelations God gives of Himself, to be in accordance with the Divine mind and will, that is of God, and it is man’s duty to believe and act accordingly. But the issuing of authoritative commands is not the only way God has of revealing His mind and will; nor, to creatures made after His own it and even though fallen, yet capable within certain limits of understanding and imitating His procedure, is it even the first and most natural way of doing so. It is rather the manifestations which God gives of Himself in His works and ways, in which they might be expected to find the primary grounds of their faith and practice; and only when such had proved to be inadequate, might they require to be supplemented by explicit commands and stringent enactments. Holding, therefore, as we do, that the command to sacrifice was not necessary to establish the Divine authority of the rite of sacrifice,—holding, moreover, that in the Divine act of covering man’s person by the skins of slain beasts, as the symbol of his guilt being covered before God, there was an actual revelation of the mind of God in regard to His purposes of mercy and forgiveness to the sinful, precisely such as was afterwards embodied in animal sacrifice,—we can satisfactorily account for the absence of the command, and, at the same time, maintain the essentially Divine origin of the rite. And the reasoning of Davison and others, on the principle of no command, therefore no Divine authority, falls to the ground of itself as a false deduction. Of course the soundness of our own view, respecting the essentially Divine origin of sacrifice and its properly expiatory character, depends upon the correctness of the interpretation we have put upon the Divine act referred to. Davison, in common with British divines generally, regards it in a merely natural light. He sees in it simply “an instance of the Divine wisdom and philanthropy; interposing, by the dictation and provision of a more durable clothing, to veil the nakedness and cherish the modesty of our fallen nature, by sin made sensible to shame.”—(P. 24.) This he deems an object worthy of a special intervention of God, worthy also of a sacrifice of animal life to secure its accomplishment; and being so secured, he thinks it quite natural that the first pair might afterwards have felt themselves perfectly at liberty to use, for the sacred purposes of worship, what they had been taught to consider at their service for the lower purposes of corporeal clothing. This inference might certainly have been legitimate, if the premises on which it is founded had been accurately stated. But there we object. If corporeal clothing alone had been the intention of the act, it would have been the fruit of a needless interposition—the more so, as our first parents were themselves powerfully prompted to seek for clothing, and had already found a temporary relief. When the instincts and feelings of nature were manifestly so alive to the object, is it to be conceived that the ingenuity and skill which proved sufficient to accomplish so many other operations for their natural support and comfort, should have been in competent here? It is altogether incredible. On simply natural grounds, the action admits of no adequate explanation, and must ever appear above the occasion—consequently unworthy of God. Besides, how anomalous, especially in a historical revelation, which ever gives the foremost place to the moral element in God’s character and ways, if He should have appeared thus solicitous about the decent and comfortable clothing of men’s bodies, and yet have left them wholly in the dark as to the way of getting peace and quietness to their consciences?Such must have been the case with our first parents, if they were thrown entirely upon their own resources in the presentation of sacrificial offerings. And so Mr Davison himself substantially admits. For, while he endeavours to account naturally, and by means of the ordinary principles and feelings of piety, for the offering of animal life in sacrifice to God, considered simply as an expression of penitence in the offerer, or of His sense of deserved punishment for sin, he denies it could properly be regarded as an expiation or atonement of guilt; and hence postpones this higher aspect of sacrifice altogether, till the law of Moses, when he conceives it was for the first time introduced. Up till that period, therefore, sacrificial worship was but a species of natural religion; and man had no proper ground from God to expect, in answer to His offerings, the assurance of Divine pardon and acceptance. But this, we contend, had it been real, would have been anomalous. It would have been to represent God as caring originally more for the bodies than for the souls of His people; and as utterly ignoring at one period of His dealings, what at another He not only respects, but exalts to the highest place of importance. How could we vindicate the pre-eminently moral character of God’s principles of dealing, and the unchangeable nature of His administration, if He actually had been at first so indifferent in regard to the removal of guilt from the conscience, and afterwards so concerned about it as to make all religion hinge on its accomplishment? Any satisfactory vindication, in such a case, must necessarily be hopeless. But we are convinced it is not needed; the moral element is pre-eminent in God’s dealings toward men. It was this which gave its significance and worth to His act of clothing our first parents, as painfully conscious of guilt, with the skins of living creatures, whose covering of innocence was in a manner put on them. And on the ground alone of what was moral in the transaction, symbolically disclosing itself (as usual in ancient times) through the natural and corporeal, can we account for the sacrifice of slain victims becoming so soon, and continuing so long, the grand medium of acceptable communion with God. If, in so clothing man, God did mean to give indication respecting the covering of man’s guilt, and men of faith understood Him to do so, all becomes intelligible, consistent, and even comparatively plain. But if otherwise, all appears strange, irregular, and mysterious,^[166] respecting sacrifice, which will be taken up at its proper place. See vol. ii., ch. 2, sec. 5.

[166] Davison’s internal reason, as he calls it (p. 84), against the atoning character of the ante-legal oblations—that such oblations, even under the law, atoned only for ceremonial offences, which of necessity had no existence in earlier times, proceeds on a not uncommon misconception of the law of Moses

We are not disposed, in a matter of this kind, to lay much stress upon philological considerations. Yet it is not unimportant to notice, that the technical and constantly recurring expression under the law, for the design of expiatory offerings (לָכַפֵּר עָלָיו), seems to have its most natural explanation by reference to that fundamental act of God, considered in respect to its moral import. To cover upon him, as the words really mean, is so singular an expression for making an atonement for guilt, that it could scarcely have arisen without some significant fact in history naturally suggesting it.We certainly have such a fact in the circumstance of God’s covering upon our first parents with the skins of animals, slain for them, if that was intended to denote the covering of their guilt and shame, as pardoned and put away by God. The first great act of forgiveness in connection with the sacrifice of life, would thus not unfitly have supplied a sacrificial language, as well as formed the basis of a sacrificial worship. But if some collateral support may be derived from this quarter to the view we have advanced, we certainly must disclaim being indebted to another philological consideration, more commonly urged by the advocates of the Divine origin of sacrifice. We refer to the argument so much pressed by Lightfoot, Magee, and others still in the present day, and based on what is regarded as a more exact rendering of Genesis 4:7, as if it should be, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?and if thou doest not well, a sin-offering lieth at the door.” Magee calls this “the plain, natural and significant interpretation” of the words, and vindicates it at great length—more especially on three grounds: 1. That the word translated sin (חטאת) is very frequently used in the sense of sin-offering; 2. That when so used, it is usually coupled (though a feminine noun) with a verb in the masculine; and 3. That the verb connected with it here, properly has respect to an animal (רבץ), and literally denotes couching or lying down—quite appropriately said of a beast, but not so of sin. A single fact is perfectly sufficient to dispose of the whole; the fact, namely, that the Hebrew term for sin never bears the import of sin-offering till the period of the law, and could not indeed do so, as till then what were distinctively called sin-offerings were unknown. To give the passage this turn, therefore, is to put an arbitrary and unwarranted sense upon the principal word, as there used; and nothing but the high authority of such men as Lightfoot and Magee could have given it the currency which it has so long obtained in this country. The real explanation of the feminine noun being coupled with a masculine verb, is to be found in the personification of sin as a wild beast, or cunning tempter to evil. And the whole passage bears respect to the circumstances of the first temptation, and can only, indeed, be correctly understood when these are kept in view: “And Jehovah said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen?Shall there not, if thou doest good (viz., in regard to the sacrifice), be acceptance (or lifting up)?and if thou doest not good, sin coucheth at the door. And unto thee shall be its desire, and thou shalt rule over it.” The last words are simply a transference to sin, in its relation to Cain, of what was originally said of Eve in her relation to Adam (Genesis 3:16); and many Jewish (see, for example, the exposition of Sola, Lindenthall, and Raphall) as well as Christian interpreters have discerned the allusion, and had respect to it in their exposition. Our translators, however, have unhappily understood the parties spoken of to be Cain and Abel, instead of Cain and sin, and thereby greatly obscured the meaning. The object of the Divine expostulation with Cain is evidently to show him, in the first instance, that the evil he frowned at really lay with himself, in his refusing to acknowledge and serve God, as his brother did. If he would still take this course, the ground of complaint should be removed; he would find acceptance, as well as his brother. But if he refused, then there was but one alternative—he could not get rid of sin: like an evil genius, it lay couching at the door, ready to prevail over him; but it was for him to do the manly part, and assert his superiority over it. In short, he is reminded by a silent reference to the sad circumstances of the fall, that giving way to sin, as he was doing, was allowing the weaker principle of his nature (represented by the woman in that memorable transaction) to gain the ascendant, while it became him, by cleaving to the right, to keep it in subjection; and it was implied, that if he failed in this, a second fall should inevitably follow—instead of rising, he must sink.

While, however, we reject the argument commonly derived from this passage in behalf of the Divine origin of sacrifice, we derive an argument from it of another kind—viz., from the explicit manner in which it connects doing good with the acceptable presentation of sacrifice, and its representing sin as unforgiven, unsubdued, reigning in the heart and conduct, if sacrifice was not so performed. Had sacrifice not been essentially of God; had it not required the humble and childlike heart of faith to present it aright; had it not carried along with it, when so presented, the blessing of forgiveness and grace from Heaven, we cannot understand how such singular importance should have been attached to it. Like the sacrifice of Christ now, it has all the appearance of having then been the great touchstone of an accepted and blessed, or a guilty and rejected condition; not one of many, as it would have been if devised by man, but standing comparatively alone as an all-important ordinance of God.