THE
DEDUCED FROM THE SCRIPTUBES
THE
DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE
.ermxm0
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A.
CHAPLAIN OF LINCOLN'S INN
NEW EDITION
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1879.
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CBTSTAL PALACE FBESS.
Jtbicat0rt) Better.
TO THE MEMBERS
YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION.
MY FRIENDS,
According to the maxims of the world, I have no right to address you so familiarly ; for as individuals and as a body you are unknown to me ; and till last February, I suspect that a ! majority of you had scarcely heard of my exist- i ence. The information which you received about i me, at that time, is not likely to make you 1 desirous of my friendship, probably will make 1 you zealous to repudiate it. Nevertheless, I thrust it upon you in this rude manner, because all that I have been told of you, and of the motives which have led you to form yourselves into an association, inspires me with an esteem and affection which the absence of any correspond ing feelings on your side cannot extinguish.
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Though you may think me bold in speaking of you as friends, you will not, I think, dispute my claim to be heard by you in my own defence. An eminent divine of the Free Church of Scot land selected you, last winter, as persons who were fit judges of a book which I had published a few months before. To all intents and pur poses, he impanelled you as a jury to try my treasons against a higher authority than that of our Sovereign Lady the Queen. By accepting him as a lecturer on the subject of my Essays, you took upon yourselves the office which he had assigned you. I need not tell you, that I had no power of challenging my jurors. Each one of them was to decide in his own conscience whether he was in possession of such evidence as would enable him to pronounce a just verdict. I hope none of you think that the charges were less serious, than those which are brought against any criminal at the Old Bailey. To me they seem immeasurably more serious. They affect my moral character infinitely more than a charge of some fraudulent transaction in relation to money could affect it. I was distinctly accused before you, of professing to believe, of professing to preach, that which in fact I deny. Ask your selves what guilt is comparable to this ? If you refuse to hold intercourse with a man who has committed a forgery, — even with one who has stolen a loaf, perhaps, under the strong tempta tion of poverty, — how must you regard a man
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who has been for years lying to God, and forging His name in support of the frauds which he has practised upon His creatures ? This charge, and nothing less than this, was brought against me by Dr. Candlish. You were constituted as judges to examine it. I venture to think, that as Englishmen, you will hold, that I am entitled to tell you why I say ' not guilty ' to it.
But this is not my chief reason for writing to you. I do not consider you my judges, though Dr. Candlish does. I can leave my own cause and my own character to that day in which he says I do not believe. The craving to justify one's self is, 1 know well, a very strong one. How strongly it has been working in me for the last six months, I might find it difficult to explain to you. But I have resisted it, for many reasons. I have felt that it was very dangerous, to mix up petty questions concerning myself with the solemnest and deepest questions con cerning man and God. I have been reminded by Dr. Candlish's book of the infirmities of my temper. He has discovered in almost every line I have written, some proof of personal irritation. He has even supposed that I quoted the awful words which our Lord spoke to the Pharisees, respecting the damnation of hell, for the sake of gratifying my spite against some who had found fault with me. My conscience acquits me of that enormous wickedness. If I had committed it, I ought never to write another line, nor to speak
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another word. But I must have given some excuse for so dreadful a suspicion, or it is hardly possible that a man of ordinary candour would have indulged it. I felt, therefore, that I was bound to be on my guard, and rather to omit any opportunity of self-defence, to let any persons who would suppose that I admitted the accusations against me to be true, than incur the risk of mixing private passions with what I believe to be the cause of God, and of His Church. And most people, I should suppose, at this time have some intimations, that their tongues and their pens were given them for other purposes than those of controversy ; and that they had better let judgment go by default against them, than disturb with miserable per sonal apologies the sorrows of mourners, and the words of Christian consolation. I have, there fore, allowed you to fancy till now, that I have cared nothing for your good opinion, or that I was totally unable to refute the charges which may have robbed me of it. And I should not have broken silence now, if an opportunity had not been afforded me of showing you, without reference to anything that has been said by Dr. Candlish, what kind of teaching I give my ordinary hearers on the subject upon which I am accused of being most heretical ; and if I did not think that I might use that opportunity, to remove impressions from your minds, which will
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hinder you from understanding, not me, but your own selves and the word of God.
I believe that it will be the fairest and best course, not to go through Dr. Candlish's lecture (for how could I hope to do justice to so elaborate a discourse in a short preface ?), but to select some one passage of it, in which he has condensed his complaints against me, — and which, at the same time, touches upon topics of so general a character, that I may make the vindication of myself entirely subordinate to the purpose which I have in view — that of explaining to you the principles, which in other books, and especially in this book, I have been endeavouring to assert. I take the following, because it contains some most true assertions respecting me ; because it is evidently intended to wound my vanity more severely than any other in the lecture ; and be cause it sums up the imputations to which I have already referred, those imputations which, if they are well founded, ought to exclude me from my function as a Clergyman — from the Church of Christ — from the society of all honest men.
" I had intended to trace slightly the author's views, as. developed in this book, to some of the sources Avhence they might have been, if they have not been derived. There is little or nothing that is really new in them. Mr. Maurice cannot be called an original writer as to matter, though his- manner and style are fresh. He is not probably much acquainted with the literature of Protestant theology. If he is, it is the worse for his candour, for in that case his mis-
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representations are inexcusable. He writes as if the field had never been gone over before, and as if he was making discoveries ; never indicating any knowledge of the fact, that all his reasonings against the current orthodox and
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evangelical doctrines have been anticipated and answered over and over again. I might show the coincidence of his views, as to the inward light, with those of Barclay and the Friends ; the extent of his obligation to Edward Irving and Thomas Erskine for his ideas of the Incarnation and Atone ment ; and the agreement of his opinions on all the leading points of Christian doctrine, with those of ordinary Uni tarians : with these two exceptions, that under whatever limitations, they admit a resurrection, a judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments ; whilst on the other hand, with whatever explanations, he asserts strongly the doctrine of the Trinity."— Pp. 483, 484.
How thankfully do I accept the testimony of Dr. Cancllish to the fact, ' that there is little or nothing that is really new ' in my writings ! It is the point which I have been labouring to establish in every one of them. If he can point out even ' the little ' which he has found new in any part of them, I shall at once begin to suspect it ; nay, I shall cheerfully give it up to his mercy. I have affirmed continually — I have affirmed again in this book, — that I have dis covered nothing ; that what I am saying is to be found in every creed of the Catholic Church ; in the Prayers and Articles of the Church to which I belong ; most emphatically in the Bible, from which they derive their authority, and to which they refer as their ultimate standard. But while I utterly disclaim novelty, which, I suppose, is
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what Dr. Candlisli means by originality in matter, there is a sense in which I earnestly desire to be original myself ; and in which I desire that you, and all the young men of England, should be so likewise. An original man is not one who invents — not one who refuses to learn from others. I say, boldly, no original man ever did that. But he is one who does not take words and phrases at second hand ; who asks what they signify ; who does not feel that they are his, or that he has a right to use them till he knows what they signify. The original man is fighting for his life ; he must know whether he has any ground to stand upon ; he must ask God to tell him, be cause man cannot. I have met some of these original men in all classes of society, in all religious schools. Wherever I have found them, I have felt that I could not copy them, but that I could sympathise with them ; that they did me good when I differed with them most ; that they instructed me, though they might scarcely know their letters. All men are capable of this originality ; it is not a special talent ; it comes from that earnestness of purpose, that longing to find what is not dependent on ourselves or on human caprice which, I believe, is awakened in us by the Spirit of Truth, and by Him only. If I have not this originality, may that Spirit im part it to me, for to be without it is death. If I have it in any measure, I shall not make anyone who receives any influence from me the retailer
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of my opinions ; I shall help to put him in a position in which he can unfold my imperfect perceptions and correct my errors — because I shall point him to the true Teacher of him, of me, of every man.
I am, therefore, most anxious to confess what I owe not only to the Creeds and to the Bible, but to those men of different communions — from every one from whom Dr. Candlish thinks he has caught me robbing. I cannot give him credit for any particular sagacity in this instance. The robbery was done in broad daylight. I confessed it instantly. Seventeen years ago I declared in print, how thoroughly I sympathised with Barclay and the Friends, in what is called their main doctrine. All that Dr. Candlish knows of my debts — ever increasing debts — to my honoured friend, Mr. Erskine, he learnt from a dedication which I prefixed to a volume of Sermons on the Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament. He did not guess from my Theological Essays that I was under obligations to the Unitarians ; I said so in plain terms, and that I felt bound to return the obligation, by showing them how dear those doctrines were to me which they rejected. He has, however, mentioned one name, which I have never uttered, publicly nor privately, without honour and admiration, but to which I have not done the same justice in print as to the others. I will repair the fault by putting that name first in my confessions here. I do it the more gladly,
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because it is the name of a Scotchman and a Presbyterian.
(1.) I had no personal intercourse with the late Mr. Irving, and I heard him preach very rarely. Though I know a few members of that Church, which is, wrongly, connected with his name, and respect them highly, I have no special sympathy with their modes of thinking and acting. But I learnt lessons from some of Mr. Irving's books, which 1 hope I shall never forget. I recollect with gratitude portions of his sermons on the Incarnation of our Lord ;— ~ by some por tions of them I was grieved. What peculiar views he had on the subject of the Atonement I do not know ; if he had any, I never entered into them. What he taught me was to reverence the education he had received in the John Knox school, and the fathers who had imparted it to him. I had not that reverence before ; I had shrunk from what I believed to be hard, narrow, and inhuman. He showed me, that the old patriarchs of Scotland had a belief in GOD, as a Living Being, as the Kuler of the earth, as the Standard of Righteousness, as the Orderer of men's acts in all the common relations of life, which was the most precious of all possessions to them, the want of which is the cause of all feebleness and immorality in our age. He made me perceive how entirely different their godliness was from the sentimental religion, which consists in feelings about God ; or from the systematic
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religion, which consists of notions about Him. He led me to see, that unless we begin from God — unless we start from the conviction, that the thing which is done upon earth He doeth it Him self — the belief in Christ will pass into a belief in a mere Saviour for us — the belief in a Spirit will be at first a mere recognition of certain influences acting upon us, and will evaporate at last into Pantheism.
I perceived, clearly, that Mr. Irving had not acquired these convictions in England. He acknowledged — brave man as he was — his obli gations to Coleridge as a teacher, at a time when such an acknowledgment was perilous, almost fatal, to his reputation with the circle which then paid homage to the young Scotch preacher. It is no courage for any man — above all, it would be no courage in me who have no reputation to lose, who cannot be in worse plight with the religious world than I am — to express the utmost depth of gratitude to that benefactor ; still I am sure that what Irving owed to him, though it was theological lore in the strictest sense, was not this theocratic faith. That he brought with him ; it was part of his covenanting, Calvinistical culture. As such I paid it, and still pay it, the profoundest homage. I have learnt since to honour the teaching of the English Church. I have to bless God for teaching which belongs to what calls itself the Catholic Church. But I have found nothing in either to supersede this. I have
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found nothing in either which is good without
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this. I reverence it as Protestant theology in the highest, purest meaning of that word, and as the very ground of all theology.
Dr. Candlish has told you, that I am ' not 1 probably much acquainted with the literature of ' Protestant theology ; if I am, it is the worse for ' my candour ; for, in that case, my misrepre- ' sentations are inexcusable.' I am much less acquainted with the literature of Protestant theology, and with all literature and all theology, than I wish to be ; if Dr. Candlish will put me in the way of improving my knowledge, I shall be most thankful to him. But when he spoke of my misrepresentations of this theology, he was bound, I think, to point them out. I have gone, at some length, in my ' Kingdom of Christ/ into a consideration of the services which Luther, Calvin, and Zuinglius, have rendered to the Church and to mankind. If he finds there any disposition to undervalue the work which they accomplished, or the principles which they brought to light, I hope he will expose me. He ivill find there very deep regrets expressed, — in which, I suppose, every Protestant shares, — that they were not able to agree among themselves ; very deep regrets for the divisions which have been perpetuated and multiplied by men who have inherited from them the negative opinions that kept them apart, but who have — if we believe the statements of the different reformers,
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such as Spener and Francke, that have risen up in their eommunities — speedily forgotten the truths to which these opinions attached them selves. I have endeavoured to trace the causes of these failures, and to remove the excessive despair which they commonly occasion to the student of history, by showing that their prin ciples, though buried under notions and nega tions, are still vital, and will rise again, and will become united whenever Protestants shall once more feel that they have a Gospel from God, and a, Gospel concerning God, — not a scheme of religion to be set up against the scheme of religion which Komanists maintain. The Pro testant of old, as I conceive, shook the vast fabric of Romish despotism, because he pro claimed that God Himself was justifying, and calling, and redeeming His creatures ; because he threw down the ladder by which men hoped to climb to heaven with the proclamation, — asserted in every Romish creed, denied in a thousand Romish practices, — that heaven had stooped to earth. Protestants are now trembling, and with good reason, lest that despotism should utterly vanquish them ; because they have a number of theories about justification, election, redemption; because they have their ladders which arc much more awkwardly constructed, and are made of more flexible materials than the Romish: because they deny in fact what they declare in words, — that God has reconciled the world to Himself. I
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thank Mr. Irving for showing me that this must needs be ; that if Protestantism is only a religious machinery, it must be a very bad religious machinery ; that if it assumes its higher, diviner right, it will be stronger than ever it was — just because it cannot stand alone, but will demand a humanity as wide as its theology, and grounded upon that.
(2.) Mr. Irving did not, however, show where I might find this humanity, or how I might con nect it with God. He did make me feel, by his own — commonly, desperate and abortive — at tempts to bridge over the chasm, that there was something wanting in the teachers of his country. By observing the incapacity of the great Genevan and German theologians, from whom they had learnt, to establish peace among themselves, I was led to perceive more clearly where, and what this deficiency was. God was the absolutely good and righteous Will. To proclaim Him as the source of all good and righteousness to men, as the only mover of their wills to good, was to preach the Gospel, the doctrines of grace. But how had this good and righteous Will manifested itself as such ? How had it proved its might against that which opposed it ? I found most various answers to these questions, given by those who were called orthodox and evangelical divines. They were perpetually engaged in answering objections to their doctrines. As Dr. Candlish says, with melancholy truth — though it
A*
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is a truth of which he proclaims me to be igno rant — they were ' answering these objections over and over again.' That seemed to be especially their function ; not to preach a Gospel or good news to men, but to answer ' over and over again' the doubts and difficulties that arose in human hearts respecting their views of the character of God and of His relation to His creatures. The doubts and difficulties were not satisfied ; they were not even quelled. And of what kind were they ? They were doubts whether what was preached was a Gospel at all, whether it was not a message of curses rather than blessings ; they were difficulties whether God's righteousness was asserted in this Gospel, whether it was not utterly denied, whether He was not represented as doing acts which He forbad men to do, as having feelings, which men, according to Christ's teaching, ought not to have. These mighty questions were at issue. Dr. Candlish says, they have been answered 'over and over again.' If they had been answered once, it would have been enough. That
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is what men demand ; that is the demand which must be met. You divines can justify God 1 over and over again ; ' but has He, as your fathers said, justified Himself? Has He made His own righteousness clear ? Has He removed the blackness and darkness which are over it ? I do confess my obligations to that other Scotch man of whom Dr. Candlish has spoken, and to
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his friend Mr. Campbell, for making me see, as I had never seen before, that the death of Christ was the answer, given once in the end of the world, to that demand ; that in it God did fully manifest His own character ; that when a man accepts that death as the revelation of God, he owns Him as altogether righteous, as altogether hating sin ; sees that His will is that all should be saved from sin ; sees that when righteousness and evil were brought into the most tremendous of all conflicts, righteousness prevailed, and evil was discomfited.
(3.) But it is evident from Mr. Erskine's book on Election, that he has perceived more to be involved in this belief than he, perhaps, at first, was aware of. ' God,' it is said, ' was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.' ' It pleased God,' says St. Paul, ' to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles.' Was man, then, according to his original consti tution related to Christ ? Was the reconciliation of the world to God, the restoration of it to its proper condition in the well-beloved Son ? Was that Son really in Saul of Tarsus, and did he only become Paul the converted when that Son was revealed in him ? Could he preach to the Gentiles, who were bowing to gods of wood and stone, Christ is in you ? So, ' Barclay and the Friends ' had said. It was very shocking to agree with Barclay and the Friends ; but I saw no help for it. They said what I found St. Paul
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DEDICATORY LETTEll.
and St. John saying. They said what Philo the Jew, and a number of the Christian fathers had perceived that all the prophets of the Old Testa ment were saying ; what they perceived was implied in the true words and acts of every heathen. They said what I found enabled me to read the Bible with open eyes ; to accept its words literally ; to feel their connexion with each other. They said what enabled me to under stand the contradictions in myself ; to feel how the light had always struggled with the dark ness ; how the darkness had tried to comprehend it and could not. They said what enabled me, when I grasped it and believed it, to feel that I was in union with every man, however he might differ from me ; and that I had nothing good in me but what belongs equally to him. They said what cleared up to me difficulties in the Evan gelical divines, and showed me the deep foundation of those doctrines which the early Quakers scorned ; for the sake of which some of the latter were disposed to abandon the teaching of their ancestors. What they said discovered to me the spiritual, eternal ground of those sacra ments which the Quakers cast aside as material and earthly. It could not signify whether Barclay the Quaker, or Philo the Jew, or Socrates the Heathen, had had apprehensions of this truth ; if it were a truth, God had given it to them, and I could ask Him to Give me strength
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to hold it fast, and to declare it to my fellows.
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(4.) In doing so, words which I had always known, but which had not the same traditional hold upon me as upon many of my countrymen, presented themselves to me, with a power which I had never dreamed was in them. I mean the words of our Articles, of our Catechism, of our Prayers. I was conscious of very radical differ ences between us and the Scotch people, for whom I had begun to feel so much respect ; I had felt that there had been, on the whole, a larger and freer humanity in this country than in theirs, with probably a greater tendency to secularity and State churchmanship. I had been taught that Scotchmen were less bound by forms than we were ; — and I thought that they had maintained a very brave fight against our pre lacy, when Charles and Laud would have forced it on them. I tell you this, that you may not fancy I had any strong prejudices which inclined me to see a meaning in our services that \vas not in them. But when I began to study the Articles, for the purpose of discovering their theological method, I perceived one characteristic contrast between them and the Confession that was drawn up by Knox for the Kirk ; a contrast which, it seemed to me, had been unaccountably overlooked. The second article in Knox's Con fession is on the Fall of Man. The second article in our Thirty-nine is on Christ the God-Man. Not till the ninth article, do we speak of the Fall ; and then not historically, as if it explained
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the condition of mankind, but morally, as ac counting for ' an infection and corruption of nature which exists in every man of the progeny of Adam, even in the regenerate.' The import ance of this diversity could scarcely be overrated. I was sure that it could not be confined to a learned and formal exposition of doctrine ; I was sure there must be some practical and general expression of it. That expression was not far to seek. The Catechism, which we teach to all children who have been baptized, tells them that they are members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of Heaven. The Prayers framed for ail the motley body which frequents our Churches, assume that all may call upon God as a reconciled Father. Here was the article translated into life. Human beings were
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treated as redeemed, — not in consequence of any act they had done, of any faith they had exercised ; their faith was to be grounded on a foregone conclusion ; their acts were to be the fruits of a state they already possessed.
The more I became acquainted with the parties in the English Church, the more I felt the necessity of standing upon this principle, that Christ is in every man, if I was to use our formularies in the plain literal sense. I found that literal sense evaded or denied by some of the most devout men among us, — because they could not reconcile it with their strono- convic-
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tion, derived from the express assertions of
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Scripture, that in us, that is in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing ; with their equally strong and reasonable conviction, that we cannot be made spiritual by a few drops of water, or by certain words acting as a charm. I found other excel lent men as zealous for the literal sense of the words, — because they had believed, also on the testimony of Scripture, that God has called us in Christ to be sons, in a sense in which men did not and could not claim that title under the earlier dispensation. I had no dream that I could reconcile these parties. I knew from history and a little experience, that I should be denounced as a silly coxcomb by both, if I made the experiment. But for myself here was the reconciliation. I needed it for my own life, whether others saw any sense in it or not. I felt that it enabled me to love and learn from the Prayers ; which, if I adopted either of the opposing hypotheses, would have tormented me continually, and have forced me at once to be come a Protestant Dissenter, or a Romanist. Whereas while I clung to it, these Prayers, instead of separating me from either of the classes which repudiate and despise us, gave me the power, if I would avail myself of it, of claim ing unity and fellowship with both. I could feel the Protestant Dissenter had done a good work, in asserting Protestantism to have a positive worth of its own, distinct from our Anglicanism, —though it seemed to me that he had failed to
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realize its worth. I could see that the Romanist was bearing witness for an Universal Church, governed and filled by the Spirit of God, — though I thought that he had enfeebled and destroyed that witness, had changed his Church into a sect, had made that which was spiritual, mundane and material, by representing the belief in God as dependent on the belief in the Church, and not the belief in the Church as dependent (according to the Creed) on the belief in God.
(5.) I have now given you a glimpse, my friends, into a part of the history of my own
* Christian instruction.' I have shown you how a foolish young man was led by his folly to seek for a wisdom, which the arguments that have been repeated 'over and over again' by Dr. Candlish and his friends could not supply. And now I come to that part of his accusation which concerns the Unitarians. I will repeat his words, that there may be no mistake about them. ' I ' might show .... the agreement of his opinions ' on all the leading points of Christian doctrine ' with those of ordinary Unitarians : with these ' two exceptions, that under whatever limitations, ' they admit a resurrection, a judgment, and a
* future state of rewards and punishments ; whilst ' on the other hand, with whatever explanations, f he asserts strongly the doctrine of the Trinity/ That is to say, Dr. Candlish told you (the 3,000 in Exeter Hall, who knew next to nothing about me but what he chose to tell you), that he could
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show that I, being under the most solemn pledge when I took orders to teach doctrines which the Unitarians reject, and having renewed, year by- year, and day by day, my protestation of adherence to these doctrines, am, nevertheless, in agreement with those who say they are false ; with these exceptions, that they admit, under some modification, a resurrection and a judgment, — whereas I, who repeat daily the words, ' I ' believe that Jesus Christ shall come again to * judge the quick and dead ; I believe in the ' resurrection of the body/ admit them under no modification whatever. This is literally the statement which he made to you, and which he deliberately printed, after he had made it. And it is respecting that statement that I affirmed before, and I affirm now again. It is an im measurably more horrible libel, — more destructive of my moral character, — than if he had said, that on a certain day, I committed a forgery on the Bank of England, or that I had, in some court of justice, been guilty of a wilful and corrupt perjury. That is my fixed, considerate opinion. I shall be grieved, if you who are, as I trust, honest men, do not share it with me. I shall fear that your moral standard is not what the standard of Christian young men ought to be. I shall begin to think, that you judge of the mag nitude of crimes by the amount of the external and visible penalties to which they subject those who commit them. I shall suspect that you
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have fallen into that incredulity respecting a day in which the secrets of all hearts shall be made known, and acts seen as they really are, which Dr. Candlish attributes to me.
I must do Dr. Candlish the justice to say, that he does wish that I might be brought before another tribunal than yours. The main object, I suspect, of his coming to England was, not to arraign an individual whom he knew to be insig nificant, but to arraign the English Church for not treating me as his Church would have treated me, if I had belonged to it. He explained to you how, if I had been subject to that jurisdic tion, I should have been convened, not before a college tribunal for corrupting the minds of young men about the one point of everlasting punishment, but before an ecclesiastical tribunal for my whole scheme of doctrine, that I might show cause why I should not be silenced as a Minister, and excommunicated from the body of the faithful. I am perfectly aware that I should have experienced that difference of treatment if my lot had been cast among Presbyterians, or among English Dissenters. And if that difference had involved a more full and thorough examina tion into all my words and acts, — if it had led to a trial according to the evidence, and to a decision such as would be given in Westminster Hall, or in the Court of Session upon any ordinary case, between man and man, or between the Queen and her subjects, — no ODC could have
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rejoiced more than I should have done. But Dr. Candlish must permit me to doubt, whether I or any man brought before one of his tribunals would have experienced this kind of justice. I must suppose that he is a fair, an advantageous, specimen of the temper which would prevail in them. And I do say, that I should use the old formula, God give thee a good deliverance, with a very solemn and a very melancholy feeling to any accused man having a righteous cause, who had this representative of the Scotch Free Church to conduct his trial, and to pronounce his judg ment. For I cannot pretend to regard that man as having in him the conditions of a righteous judge — (I ask for no mercy or courtesy) who took advantage of a moment when he knew that
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I was under a stigma from a learned body in my own country, and that the religious press of Great Britain was almost without exception1 denouncing
1 I am bound to name the only exceptions which I know ; and I do it with the greatest pleasure, for reasons which will bo im mediately apparent. The Nonconformist newspaper had every reason to dislike me, as one who had defended publicly, not only the formu laries of my Church, but the union of Church and State. The writers in it seized the moment when they might have had a triumph over me, to treat me with peculiar consideration and kindness. The Guardian newspaper had generally expressed for me aud my writings suspicion and aversion. Instead of manifesting these feelings more strongly, when I lost my respectability with the class for which it was written, and which it represents, that was the time in which it showed me an indulgence and courtesy which was the more honour able and grateful, because the Editor thoroughly disapproved of my opinions, and approved of my expulsion. Instances of generosity so rare — -as far as I know, so unprecedented — in the history of religious periodicals, ought to be recorded.
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me, to appeal to your passions and your igno rance, and to the passions and ignorance of the clergymen and Dissenting ministers who were countenancing him on the platform of Exeter Hal], in support of a charge which I solemnly declare (and I call upon the authorities of the College which has condemned me, upon the Bishops of my Church who suspect me, upon all who have impugned my preaching and my manner of life, and who personally dislike me, — to say if they know, to examine if they do not know, whether I am speaking truly or falsely), is belied by all that I have written or preached, by every line of the book upon which he professed to rest it.
Did I not then say, in that book, that I had learnt much from Unitarians, and that what I had learnt from them were truths — essential truths — the very staff of my being ? Have I not confessed as much in this Letter ? Most as suredly. I said there — I say here — that just as I accepted the positive teaching of Mr. Irving, and of his Calvinistical Scotch forefathers, re specting God and His righteous government, and His war against evil, and did not accept that negative teaching which seemed to me to weaken and darken His righteousness, to contract His power, to make His war with evil ineffectual ; — just as I accepted the positive teaching of Barclay and the Friends, respecting the Inward Light, and rejected that negative teaching which
DEDICATORY LETTER. xxis
made the manifestation of this Light in the acts of the Son of God on earth and in heaven, of such small significance ; — just so I testified the most entire and cordial sympathy with the declaration of the Unitarians, that God is pure and absolute Love — that God is a Father ; and therefore expressed the most thorough dissent from every one of those negative doctrines of theirs, which, as I affirmed, and in my book endeavoured to prove, turn the love of God into an unreality ; into an indifference to evil ; into a tolerance of the sins and miseries which are destroying God's creation. This language I used at the outset of that book which called forth Dr. Candlish's lecture ; this language the whole of it is written to explain and illustrate. I have maintained that the Unitarian denial of the fact, that the Son of God — being of one substance with the Father, being the Eternal Word of God, the express Image of God, the only Lord, and Teacher, and Guide of Man — took human flesh and died man's death, and that by these acts God reconciled man to Himself, justifying us in Christ from all things from which we could not be justified by the Law of Moses, glorifying our Nature at the right hand of God, is, ipso facto, a denial that God loves man, and has interfered to rescue our race from the misery and curse, which all history shows that mankind has felt and groaned under, which each one of us groans under. I have said that the denial, by the old
xxx DEDICATORY LETTER.
or ' ordinary ' Unitarians (to use Dr. Candlish's word), of a Spirit, or personal Comforter, and the substitution for that denial, by some modern Unitarians, of a vague belief in Influences or a pervading universal Spirit, empties God of His fatherly character, and robs us of the privileges of sons. I have further contended with great — some of the orthodox journals seem to think with excessive — vehemence, that the denial of an Evil Spirit, of a Devil, confuses the facts of the universe, our own inmost experience, and the divine witness concerning God's victory over evil. It is in this way, members of the Young Men's Christian Instruction Society ! that I have shown the agreement of my opinions on all the leading 2}°^s °f Christian doctrine uith the ordinary Unitarians.
But there are exceptions. ' The Unitarians believe in a resurrection under certain modifica tions.' There, says your lecturer, I am not in agreement with them. Will you listen for a moment to the ground upon which this charge stands ? I found the ordinary Unitarian acknow ledging, as Dr. Candlish says, a resurrection. The Resurrection of Christ from the dead seemed to him a proof, which he could not obtain else where, that men are immortal, that they do not perish altogether, when the breath leaves their bodies. I rejoiced, I said, that any had that faith, because more was implied in it than those who held it knew. But I contended that this
DEDICATORY LETTER. xxxi
was not the meaning of Christ's Resurrection, as St. Paul sets it forth to us. According to him, Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification. If He did rise to prove that we were immortal, He would have proved what the conscience of men confessed, with trembling and horror. To deliver us from that horror, to show us that God claimed us as His sons and daughters, was surely a nobler result of so tran scendent a work. It was the foundation of a Gospel ; the other could never be. But I con tended as earnestly, that this emancipation of men's spirits was not the only or final effort of Christ's Kesurrection. The redemption of the body was quite as much a part of His work for man ; its redemption from death, the grave, and hell. What I believed that orthodox Christians, being in this respect ' in entire agreement with the ordinary Unitarians,' had done, was to exhaust the belief of the resurrection of the body of all its force, its meaning, its consolation, by substituting for the resurrection of the living- powers and principles of which our bodies con sist, the renovation of those elements which were the signs of its decay, its curse, its death. By substituting a gathering together, at some distant day, of them, for that gathering together of all Christ's members in Him, which the Apostle spoke of, they have destroyed the connexion between our resurrection and Christ's ; they have justified the Romish worship of relics ; they have
xxxii DEDICATOEY LETTER.
made the reunion of the soul with the corruption, which we desire to be rid of, the very object of our hopes. Because I have asserted in this full manner the resurrection of both spirit and body as the fruit of the Resurrection of Christ, I am said to be far worse than the Unitarians, in that they do, with some modifications, admit a resur rection ! 1
But they differ from me again, because 'under whatever modification, they admit a 'Judgment.' I acknowledge that they admit it, much in the same way, so far as I can gather from his lecture and his book on my Essays, as Dr. Candlish admits it. That is to say, they
1 A writer in the Christian Observer for February, who has accused me of philosophical cowardice, of literary dishonesty, of preaching another Gospel than that which the Apostles preached,— in other words, has pronounced me ACCURSED of God and man (for who can doubt that he recollected himself, and intended his readers to recollect, the words in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Grvlatians ?), — this writer has charged me with holding the doctrine of Hymeuceus and Philetus, that the Resurrection has passed already, that is to say, the doctrine that there is no resurrection of the body, but only of the spirit; since if men have bodies which are not risen, and they are to rise, that resurrection must be future. May God help him to a clearer judgment, if he wrote down tho charge believing it to be true ! May God forgive him, if he threw ifc out in mere recklessness! How one rejoices that these prophets wear veils when they curse ; so that we may merely regard them as representing the habit of mind in what is called the religious world, not as actual living men. Very probably, when the mask is off, they may not only be capable of ordinary humanity, but may follow some of the precepts of the Sermon on tho Mount, which in their official character they are obliged to repudiate. I ought to say, that this writer has understood better than any I have met with, the real issue upon which the dispute between his school and me turns. Ifc is the question whether the Fall or the Redemption is the ground on which humanity rests.
DEDICATORY LETTER. xxxiii
admit that God will hereafter pronounce a certain sentence upon good acts, and upon bad acts ; the sentence upon one to be followed by certain rewards ; the sentence on the other by certain punishments. There is to be a great trial day of the universe, they think, when these sentences will go forth, and when the rewards and the punishments will begin. I say, I appre hend this is both the old Unitarian idea of a judgment, and Dr. Candlish's. If it was not his, he would not have joined the word ' Judgment,' which occurs in almost every book and every page of the Bible, to the phrase ' Future state of rewards and punishments,' which is to be found in no book or page of Scripture, which belongs peculiarly to the age that all Evangelical writers have described as the Unitarian age — the eighteenth century. What I have tried is to recover for the Scriptural word the sense in which Scripture employs it ; a sense immeasur ably deeper and more comprehensive than any conveyed by the eighteenth century phrase ; a sense often in direct moral contradiction to that. A judgment of the heart and reins, a judgment of the man, a judgment of the principles from which acts flow — this is what the Scripture teaches me to believe in here, to expect here after. Under the sense of this judgment — in the confidence that the Judge is always at the door — it desires that I should live every day and every hour ; it teaches me also to look for a com-
xxxiv DEDICATORY LETTER.
plete day of revelation, when everything that has been hidden shall come forth ; when every crea ture shall be made manifest in God's sight. This is that day of Christ to which I desire that I myself, and that every one of you should look for ward ; and which I am sure will come to me and to you, because Christ is the King and Lord of our hearts now, — and because the word which He has spoken will judge us then. And, therefore, you are told that I do not admit a judgment, which the Unitarians, under whatever modification, do admit.
But Dr. Candlish makes a concession, which he felt to be singularly liberal. He acknow ledges — reluctantly, but still he acknowledges— that I do, with whatever explanations, assert strongly the doctrine of the Trinity. This is the conclusion of the passage I am now commenting upon. I shall speak of it for a moment, since there is none which more curiously illustrates the mind of the author, or throws more light upon his theology. He regards the Christian faith as made up of a certain set of opinions — an opinion about the resurrection, an opinion about the judgment, an opinion about sacrifice, an opinion about the Trinity. He finds me wanting in the proper opinions about some of these sub jects ; he finds that I entertain something like what he has been used to hold about another, though with explanations which puzzle him. Shall I tell you what these explanations are ? I
DEDICATORY LETTER.
affirm that when I believe in God the Father, in 1 God the Son, and in God the Holy Ghost, — when I give glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, — I am escaping from I opinions. I believe that I am at the centre of God's revelations of Himself ; I believe that He has led us out of our crude and miserable opinions about Him, to that Name which expresses what He is in Himself, what He is in relation to me, and to all the universe. And, therefore, believ ing in the Trinity, — or if you must put Him, in whom you live and move and have your being, at a greater distance from you — in the doctrine 1 of the Trinity — I am at the point whence all other truths radiate, and to which they converge. I cannot separate the belief in Christ's incarna tion, or death, or resurrection, or in the death and resurrection of myself, or any human being, from this Name. It is the only explanation of them all ; it is that which reconciles and har monizes all the brighter thoughts of God, that men have been cherishing in all ages ; it is that which scatters their darkness, it is that which declares to them, that there is an Absolute Root of truth and good at the foundation of all things, — the Eternal Father; that there is a perfect Utterer and Revealer of that truth and good, — the Eternal Word, the only-begotten Son ; that there is a Living Person, who carries out that truth and good, and makes it effectual and triumphant over rebellious wills, — the Spirit that proceedeth from
xxxvi DEDICATORY LETTER.
the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the Son together, is worshipped and glorified for ever. These ' explanations ' of mine make Dr. Candlish feel that our faith in the Trinity, though it may be expressed in the same words, is sub stantially different. I am most unwilling to think so. I trust and believe that the ' explana tions ' of the doctrine, which I have read with exceeding pain in his book, do not express his inward mind ; but only show what a hard, intel lectual, logical crust has formed about it. If I had not that confidence, I should tremble indeed for Scotland. I will tell you why. Nothing has seemed to me more beautiful than the pic tures of patriarchal life, which have been drawn from the homes of the old Scotch Calvinists ; that life of which Burns, with all his hatred of some of their opinions and habits, has spoken as the very bulwark of his land. Now this domestic life, grounded first on the authority of the father, and the example of righteousness which he afforded to his children, had its ultimate root in the belief that God was the righteous Father, and that each head of a household was to present Him in that character through his own acts. But I have now heard a Scotch preacher, the very head of the body in Scotland which boasts that it preserves most of the old faith, actually complaining of that idea of the Trinity which makes it the ground of human relations ; and in sisting that the idea of Persons who perform
DEDICATORY LETTER. xxxvii
certain acts of creation, redemption, sanctification
: (which, subject to the other, I accept also), is the only orthodox one. I am certain that every early Church father, every sixteenth century
I reformer, would have seen in this complaint that which threatens all orthodoxy and all faith. And I beseech you, young men desirous of
' Christian instruction, if you care to restore the old domestic morality, which is so fast deserting us, — if you care to leave to your sons a belief
1 which they shall feel is really the ground of their life, — not to admit into your minds these dead,
! official explanations of a mystery, which God, in His Bible, has revealed to us through our actual re-
I lations ; which He would have us accept as the great instrument of exalting and transfiguring them.
There is another particular, in which I have found Dr. Candlish strangely at variance — so far, at least, as his language goes — with the maxims of his forefathers. His objections to my mode of
1 speaking against ' current ' notions and habits, strike at the root, it appears to me, of the office of a minister of God. If he is not to be a reprover in the gate, he is nothing ; if he is to confine his reproofs to those with whom he is scarcely ever brought into contact — to Romanists, for instance —he is making his work an easy and popular one enough ; but he is not imitating those who denounced Popery in other ages, for they did it at the risk of their reputations and their lives. If he talks against the world — meaning thereby
xxxviii DEDICATORY LETTEK.
the gay or fashionable world — and sympathizes with what is called the religious world, he may again get great credit to himself, and contem plate his own position with much contentment ; but he will find, by degrees, that the world which flatters him, and which he flatters, is that very one whereof St. James spoke, when he said, ' To be in friendship with it, is to be at enmity with God/ So the prophets of old found ; so the apostles found ; so the reformers found ; so it was in the days when our Lord walked on earth. All had to contend with the religious world of their day — He most of all. What were the Scribes and the Pharisees but the most re spected, and most exclusive, portion of that world? This is a most serious question for a disciple of John Knox to consider. Dr. Candlish has ap peared among you, not so much to denounce me, as to represent and advocate the ' current ' reli gious notions of the day, which he supposes I have impugned. He has had no excuse for saying that I have denounced any individual teacher ; if I had, I should have escaped many of his censures which turn upon my vague use of the words 'divines' and 'religious teachers/ I was aware of the vagueness. I was tempted to remove it, by quoting instances, and producing authorities. I resisted the inclination. I would not imitate the religious periodicals, by de nouncing men instead of systems ; — men, who may be blessing God in their hearts, and teaching others to bless Him, while they use language
DEDICATORY LETTER. xxxix
which seems to me utterly inconsistent with all that His word declares respecting Him. While, therefore, in my Theological Essays, I often spoke by name of the great Evangelical teachers of the last century, because I never felt disposed to mention them without honour, I alluded only to maxims and habits, wrhen I referred to my contemporaries. I had no need to prove that the opinions and maxims exist ; the groans of thousands in religious families testify to that fact. I knew very well that they might be ex plained away — as all the most idolatrous prac tices, and all the most subtle outrages upon Scripture and morality, in Romish countries, have been explained away — ' over and over again ; ' but I knew that they remained, in spite of the explanations, — and I believed that they were destroying the Christianity of our land. Dr. Candlish has come to England to convince the religious world, that it is in a very right and satisfactory state. Who can doubt that he will succeed ? Who can wonder that the religious periodicals which embody all the tempers and inclinations of that which he has defended, should hail such a champion ? But is he doing you good by his apologies ? Are they such as would have been heard from one of the old men whom he reveres ? Would not they have appeared as witnesses of God, to show the people of Israel their sins ? Would they not have called those false prophets, who said, ' Peace, peace ' ?
I would say again, that I do not take Dr.
xl DEDICATORY LETTER.
Candlish's lecture, or his book, as evidence of what he himself is. I know nothing of him personally ; but I know enough of his history to be aware that he has not lived to make his own countrymen content with the notions, at least on the subject of church government, which he sup posed were ' current ' among them. I know that he has made sacrifices to what he holds to be a neglected principle. I would ask of God, that we may imitate his faith, and apply it in the way that it is wanted in our country. I do not think, if we cherish it, we shall cause any dis ruption in the church of our fathers. I do think that wre shall be continually at war with the religious world, which is the counterfeit of the Church, and which is trying to reduce all Churches into a Babel of sects.
I have now said all I intend ever to say on the subject of Dr. Candlish, his lecture, and his book. I have to thank him for some passages in both, \vhich I had not the least reason to expect. Once or twice, he has spoken of me, almost as if he thought I might be a believer in Christ ; he has even expressed something like a sympathy with some words I have written ; he has half admitted that I may not be merely throwing out mystical or ' misty ' phrases, when I have dis coursed of the divine Word as the great Teacher of mankind. I see that some of his reviewers, in his own country, are scandalized and alarmed at these expressions ; they earnestly beg him to cancel them in a future edition. So far as con-
DEDICATORY LETTEH. xli
sistency goes, I believe they are right. He should not lead you, or any, to milder thoughts of one whom he has pronounced a deliberately and habitually dishonest man. I value the words, however, not for my sake, but for his ; or for mine only, because they enable me to separate, as I always desire to do, the man from the apologist and the controversialist, and make me ashamed of myself, whenever, for a moment, I confound them.
Having taken leave of my accuser, I wish to explain, as shortly as I can, how the work, which I now present to you, is connected with the sub jects which he has brought under your notice, and of which I have been speaking in this letter. My desire is to ground all theology upon the Name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; not to begin from ourselves and our sins ; not to measure the straight line by the crooked one. This is the method which I have learnt from the Bible. There everything pro ceeds from God ; He is revealing Himself, He is acting, speaking, ruling. Next, my desire is to ground all human morality upon the relation in which man stands to God ; to exhibit whatever is right and true in man, as only the image and reflex of the original Kighteousness and Truth. I cannot base this morality upon the dread of some future punishments, upon the expectation of some future rewards. I believe the attempts to make men moral by such means have failed always ; are never more egregiously and rnon-
xlii DEDICATORY LETTER.
strously failing than now. I believe that they fail because they are in conformity with our notions, and not with God's purpose, as set forth in Holy Scripture. There I find God using punishments, to make men sensible of the great misery of being at war with His will ; showing them the blessed results to their spirits, to their bodies, to nations, to families, to individuals, to the father and the child, the master and the workman, to the persons who subdue the earth, and to the earth which they subdue, from con formity to His will. There 1 find the kingdom of Heaven set forth as the kingdom of righteous ness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, which Christ, the only-begotten of the Father, came to reveal ; the kingdom over our spirits, the kingdom into which the poor in spirit, who renounce themselves and trust in God, enter. There I find Hell set before me, as the loss of this state, as separation from God, as the dark ness into which those fall who love darkness rather than the light which has come into the world, and is shining into their hearts. There I am taught, that God by all His discipline and government here, is leading men to fly from the darkness and turn to the light ; and that they are resisting His will when they prefer Hell to Heaven. There I learn to look upon the future state, as even a divine of the eighteenth century represented it to be, not as the commencement of a new state of things, — but as the carrying
DEDICATORY LETTER. xliii
out and consummation of all God's plans and government, — as the state in which tLe victory of good over evil is no longer a question of doubt or uncertainty.
Now this theology and this morality are all, I think, involved in, and tested by, the doctrine of Sacrifice. That doctrine I hold, as our fore fathers held it, to be the doctrine of the Bible, the doctrine of the Gospel. The Bible is, from first to last, setting forth to us the meaning of Sacri fice. If we cannot preach that that meaning has been accomplished, that the perfect Sacrifice has been made for the sins of the whole world, that God has made peace with us by the death of His Son, I do not see that we have any gospel from God to men. As little do I see what ground there is for human morality ; since that morality consists, as I believe, in the giving up of our selves. All immorality consists in self-seeking, self- pleasing, self -glorifying. But I find from the history of the world expounded by the Bible, that there has been always a tendency in the corrupt heart of man to make Sacrifice itself the minister of man's self-will, self-indulgence, self- glorification. Instead of giving himself up to God, man seeks to make his God, or his gods, give up to him ; he offers sacrifices, that he may persuade the power which he thinks he has wronged, to exempt him from the punishment of his wrong. This is man's theology ; this is what has produced all the hateful superstitions under
xliv DEDICATORY LETTER.
which the world groans. If I say that the seeds of this theology, of these superstitions, are not in your hearts and in mine, I contradict the Bible, I contradict the witness of my conscience. If I suppose that there is any heathen tendency to which a Christian man is not liable, I deny the fact of the corruption in the heart of every man of the progeny of Adam, or I suppose that, by some marvellous accident, we are exempted from the operation of it. I must, therefore, ask the Bible, the book of God, to explain to me in what form that evil is likely to appear in my age and in me ; I must ask God Himself to tell me how I may be delivered from it, — how I may receive the true sacrifice which taketh away the sins of the world, — and so be prevented from accepting notions of sacrifice which increase and deepen the sin of the world, which suggest thoughts of God that destroy His righteousness, and make Him after the image of my unrighteousness, which lead men to practices that are hateful to Him, and destructive of themselves.
In these Sermons I have compared these two sacrifices ; the sacrifice which manifests the mind of God, — which proceeds from God, which accom plishes the purposes of God in the redemption and reconciliation of His creatures, which enables those creatures to become like their Father in Heaven by offering up themselves ; — and the sacrifices which men have dreamed of in one country or another, as means of changing the
DEDICATORY LETTER. xlv
purposes of God, of converting Him to their mind, of procuring deliverance from the punish ment of evil, while the evil still exists. If you like to read what I have written, you will see whether, as you have been told upon authority which you are not likely to dispute, I do reject the faith of our forefathers in the might and efficacy of Christ's Cross ; whether I disbelieve in His advocacy, and intercession, and eternal priesthood ; whether I measure the glory and the end of His Sacrifice by some paltry notions of my own ; whether I ask the Bible to confirm those notions, or to deliver me from them ; whether I am introducing a ' cowardly philosophy ' which shrinks from the thought of God as a punisher and as a judge ; whether I am guilty of ' dis honesty ' in using words in some sense of my own, not in the sense in which God's word and His Church have used them ; whether I am one of those accursed men who rob the world of the Gospel which God has sent them to proclaim in it, and substitute another of their own,
I have tried to speak of Sacrifice under every aspect in which the Bible presents it. If I have not connected it with the adjective Vicarious, which is so favourite a one in modern theology, the reason is that I did not find that word in the Bible. Nor does it occur once in our Thirty-nine Articles. Nevertheless, I do not object to the word. It may have, I conceive, an excellent If, when we call Christ a Vicar, we
xlvi DEDICATORY LETTEE.
understand what the Scripture understands when it calls Him a Redeemer, a Reconciler, an Advo cate, a Priest, a Mediator, a Son ; if when we call His Sacrifice a vicarious one, we understand what the Scripture understands when it says that He was set forth as a propitiation, that He bore the sins of the world, that He was made a curse, that He was made sin ; then I hold that He is a Vicar, and that His sacrifice is vicarious in the fullest sense ; for I only complain of those who would evade or dilute the force of these expressions. But if a meaning is attached to Vicar or vicarious, which is not in harmony with this language, most assuredly I reject that meaning, and have taken some pains to show how mischievous it has been. I preached these Sermons with an oppressive feeling that a crisis may be at hand which will try us all of \vhat sort we are : wilich will show whether we believe in God or are Atheists ; whether we worship Him or the devil. But I preached them also with a strong and ever grow ing conviction, that if some of the notions of sacrifice which prevail among us are doing more than anything else to separate us from God and from each other, the true Sacrifice, which was made once for all, will be found to be a bond of peace between God and man, and between all the different tribes, races, and sects of men. In that bond may you and I be united for ever. Your Friend and Well-wisher,
F. D. MAURICE.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
SERMON I. — THE SACRIFICES OF CAIN AND ABEL ... 1
,, II. — NOAH'S SACRIFICE 18
„ III. — THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM .... 33 „ IV. — SACRIFICE OF THE PASSOVER . . . .49
„ V. — THE LEGAL SACRIFICES 67
., VI. — DAVID'S SACRIFICE 85
„ VII. — THE LAMB BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE
WORLD 99
„ VIII. — CHRIST'S SACRIFICE A REDEMPTION . . . 114
., IX. — CHRIST'S SACRIFICE A DELIVERANCE FROM THE
CURSE OF THE LAW 130
„ X.— THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST A PROPITIATION . 144
„ XI. — THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST THE PURIFICATION
OF THE CONSCIENCE 161
xlviii CONTENTS.
PAGE
SERMON XII. — CHRIST MADE SIN FOR us .... 179
„ XIII. — CHRIST'S SACRIFICE THE PEACE-OFFERING FOE
MANKIND 195
„ XIV. — CHRIST'S SACRIFICE A POWER TO FORM us AFTER
His LIKENESS 212
„ XV. — CHRIST'S DEATH A VICTORY OVER THE DEVIL 227
,, XVI. — CHRIST THE ADVOCATE 242
„ XVII. — CHRIST THE HIGH-PRIEST .... 260
,, XVIII. — THE ADORATION OF THE LAMB . . . 276
„ XIX. — THE WORD OF GOD CONQUERING BY SACRIFICE 294
THE
DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE.
SERMON I.
THE SACRIFICES OF CAIN AND ABEL.
(Lincoln's Inn, Quinquagesima Sunday, Feb. 26, 1854.)
' And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering : but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, why art thou wroth ? and why is thy countenance fallen ? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.' — GENESIS iv. 3-7.
I BELIEVE the teaching of the Bible on the subject of Sacrifice is very methodical. By mixing together texts concerning it, which are taken at random from any book between Genesis and the Apocalypse, we confuse our minds, and often end with holding the notions which we should have held if no such words had been written. Perhaps, if we have sufficient reverence for the book to follow in the steps which it marks out for us, we may learn something from it. We shall not
2 THE SACRIFICES OF [SERM.
learn, even then, if we forget that all true words — the truest most of all — only speak to us when they speak in us, when they awaken us to thought, self-questioning, wonder, hope. It is not, therefore, an idle form which preachers use — if it is, it must be a blasphemous form — when they ask that the Spirit of God may quicken and raise the hearts which the word of God is sent to illuminate. To imagine that any book or any living voice can give, if there is not a receiver, or that it can give, except according to the measure of the receiver, is to contradict all experience and all reason.
The passage I have read to you is the first in the Bible which refers to a sacrifice. It has stirred up a number of doubts in the minds of men. I will refer to a few of them, and I will say how far I think this story will resolve them, how far it obliges us to seek for further light, which it does not impart, and which it ought not to impart.
(1.) The first question is this : What did Cain and Abel know about sacrifice ? Were they told by a special revelation that they were to offer something, and what they were to offer ? or had that revelation been made to Adam, and did they receive the knowledge by transmission ? You say, ( It may be very well to form. ' guesses upon this point, but who can give us any ' satisfaction ? The Scriptures are silent ; what can we 1 do but set up one speculation against another ? ' The objection is a plausible one, to a great extent a sub stantial one, confirmed by the experience of those who
i.] CAIN AND ABEL. 3
have travelled this road. But yet men will ask them selves again and again, ' How did this knowledge re- ' specting the way of approaching God reach men in ' early days ? ' They will feel that this demand has very much to do with another : ' How do we become ' possessed of it now ? Can we have that knowledge ? ' Is it not all a dream ? 3 The most practical issues appear to be involved in some way with this inquiry ; however we may wish to avoid it, we find it continually coming round to us and confronting us.
We are bound, I conceive, never to assume the existence of a decree which is not expressly announced to us. A decree is an open, explicit, formal thing; if it is to be obeyed, it must be set forth in intelligible terms. The book of Genesis has already recognised that prin ciple. The command not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, is strict and definite. It is proclaimed as the precept which the parents of the race were to recollect and follow ; the one which they could not disobey without bringing death upon themselves. If another precept of wider range and greater perma nence, as definite and positive, was made either then or speedily afterwards, would the historian have left those whom he wrote to instruct, to guess or divine it ?
But is it at variance with his principle, or with the style of his narrative, to assume that a revelation of God had preceded any acts of theirs, and was the cause of them ? I am most anxious to lead you to notice this distinction; it is so important for the
B 2
4 THE SACRIFICES OF [SEEM.
understanding of this subject, and of the whole doctrine of Scripture. I think you will find that throughout the Scriptures, an announcement about this or that act which it behoves a man to do or to leave undone, is called a statute or an ordinance. It is said to proceed from the Lord; He makes it, He enforces it. Bat a revelation is a discovery of Himself to a creature whom He has formed to know Him. Such revelations, when they mark out great epochs in the history, as that to Moses in the bush did, may be recorded with especial solemnity ; but they are implied in every part of the narrative. It is constructed upon the assumption that they occur continually. The postulate of the Bible is, that man could not be what he is, if God did not hold converse with him ; that this is his distinction from other creatures ; that this is the root of all that he knows, the ground of what is right and reasonable in him. You cannot read the Bible narratives simply without perceiving that this is the maxim from which they start ; people who will not acknowledge it as a true maxim, talk of the language they find in the sacred writings as characteristic of a Semitic people, or of the infancy of civilisation ; but they cannot help perceiving that it is there, and that the essence, as well as the outward form, of the history depends upon it.
Although, then, we should certainly have expected Moses to inform us plainly if there had been a direct ordinance to Adam, or his sons, concerning the offering of fruits or animals, we have no right to expect that he
L] CAIN AND ABEL. 5
should say more than he has said, to make us under stand that they received this much more deep and awful kind of communication. If he has laid it down that man is made in the image of God — if he has illustrated that principle after the fall, by showing how God met Adam in the garden in the cool of the day, and awakened him to a sense of his disobedience — we do not want any further assurance that the children whom he begat would be born and would grow up under the same law. We should want a very distinct assurance, and we should have reason to be very much startled and perplexed if we received it, that this was not the case. Certainly, we have no such intimation. The history of Cain, as I shall show you presently, affirms in the most simple and distinct manner, that he as well as his brother was under the divine teaching, that he knew he was, and that he did not lose that knowledge till he had brought himself into an utterly inhuman condition.
Do not, I beseech you, try to realise this conviction, by imagining these two men to be different from others of their kind. Conceive of them just as the Scripture represents them — one as the tiller of the ground, the other as a keeper of sheep. They are working just as men have worked in all countries and in all generations since. They look now and then to the sky over their heads ; generally they are busy with the stubborn earth, which they are weeding of its thorns and thistles, or with the animals they are watching and folding,
6 THE SACRIFICES OF [SERM.
and following when they wander. To sucli men there conie thoughts of One who is ruling them as they rule the sheep, who in some strange way makes the seeds grow which they put in the ground. These thoughts are altogether wonderful ; they cannot weigh, them nor measure them ; at times they are crushed by them ; at times they are lifted up by them. No doubt their parents have told them that they have a Lord, and that He sees them, and that he is ordering their ways. Surely it is He who is making them feel His presence,, urging them to confess Him. How shall they confess Him ? What is the simplest of all possible methods, in which they can manifest their subjection ? Ask yourselves : Is it speech ? Is it some vehement phrase of thanksgiving, some passionate petition ? These may come in time, but they cannot come first ; they are not the most childlike way of testifying homage, not the- one which ordinary human experience would lead us to look for, when One has revealed Himself to us whom we perceive but dimly, yet with whom we feel we have to do. Acts go before words. The shepherd takes the sheep ; he desires to present it to this Ruler, who must be near him, whom he must find some way of acknow ledging. The tiller of the ground takes the fruits of the earth ; he would present these. You ask why one mode of presenting them occurs to him rather than another ? I cannot tell, any more than I can tell you why one mode of tillage, or one mode of folding tho sheep, occurs to him rather than another. There is no>
i.] CAIX AND ABEL. 7
doubt one mode which is better than another; it may be shown him in due time, if he has not found it. What ever he discovers on that subject, or any other, he re ceives. It is wisdom which is imparted to him, light which comes to him from the Source of light. I do not see what one can say different, or more, in the other case. There, too, the suggestion of the mode in which the service is to be performed is welcomed as divine ; yet it is felt to be natural and reasonable. When once it has been practised, it seems as if there could scarcely be another mode. The historian, however, does not tell us in what way Abel or Cain offered their gifts ; he merely says that they did offer them. Everything is done to make us feel that we are not reading of a time when laws have been established which prescribe the nature and method of sacrifice, — that we are in a much more elementary stage of culture ; but that the Teacher in each stage is the same, and that we shall recognise Him in more advanced periods, if we understand His lessons in this.
(2.) It has been asked again, 'Was not Abel right ' in presenting the animal, and Cain wrong in presenting 1 the fruits of the earth ? Must not the first have been ' obeying a precept, and the second transgressing one?' I must apply the same rule as before. We are not told this ; we may not put a notion of ours into the text. Moses does not inform us that Cain's was an illegitimate kind of offering. It would have been strange if he had ; for the fruits of the earth were offerings which the law
8 THE SACRIFICES OF [SERM.
that was given to the children of Israel required, as well as those of sheep and oxen. The latter may have had a deeper significance ; I shall hope to consider that i significance on some future occasion. But the former had certainly their own honour, and the notice of them here is not a disparaging one. It would appear from the narrative, as if each brother brought the gift which most suited his occupation. The pastoral occu pation may suggest more living and human thoughts than that of the mere husbandman. The care of animals, with their caprices and their affections, may call forth a patience and a sympathy which are rarely found in him who is only busy with the inanimate clods. But our Lord revealed divine analogies in the sower and the seed, as well as in the shepherd and the sheep. It is not safe to disparage any work, or not to own it as pregnant with wisdom and mystery. God is surely present in all. It cannot be that he who in depend ence and submission offers Him of the fruits of the ground, which it is his calling to rear, is therefore rejected, or will not be taught a deeper lore by other means, if at present he lacks it.
(3.) In saying this, I have anticipated a third, and still more serious question, which is raised, by the words, And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. In their haste to determine why this difference was made between two brothers, many have resorted to the notion of some disobedience or ignorance on the
i.] CAIN AND ABEL. 9
part of Cain, in the choice of his gift. I have tried to show you that this opinion is not sanctioned by the passage in which we should have looked for some con firmation of it. The words of this clause are still more repugnant to it. When it is said, unto Abel and to his offering, unto Cain and to his offering, we are led to think that, at all events, the distinction is to be first
I sought in the persons; that the things which they bring are quite secondary.
It is needful to clear our minds of this confusion, though I am well aware that, when it is removed, the
. difficulty acquires a more terrible character than it had before. ' These brothers, then/ we say to ourselves, ' without having done good or evil, each testifying his ' gratitude in his own way, in the way which was most ' natural to him, are said to be respectively accepted and ' rejected, merely because it pleased God to accept one
* and reject one. Are we not then met at the very thres- 1 hold of the Bible — in the very infancy of our race — with ' that tremendous assertion of arbitrary power, of simple
* sovereignty, at the root of all things, which has driven, ' and is driving, its thousands to despair, its tens of thou- ' sands to Atheism ? Are not the foundations of moral ' order and distinction sapped at the very opening of the ' records from which we derive our belief in righteous- ' ness and evil ? ' I do not suppress the statement of this doubt, because I know how many are racked by it, and how many merely escape the torment by assuming that the subject is one which has nothing to do with
10 THE SACEIFICES OF [SERJI.
them, and which it is safer not to think about. Would to God we all felt how much it has to do with us ; how unsafe it is to put such a subject at a distance from us ; how impossible it is for us to see into the nature of it, till it is brought near to us, close to our inmost being ! There was never a more faithful description than that which Milton gives of the way in which evil spirits discuss such arguments :
' Others apart, sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate ; Fixed Fate, Free Will, Foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
All ' who sit apart upon a hill retired ' to amuse themselves with such reasonings, supposing that they have no concern with the crowds who are wandering below — supposing that these are topics for the wise to speculate about, not realities for living and suffering men — enter upon them in the same temper as those of whom our poet writes, and, whether their starting-point is a philosophical or a theological one, arrive at the same result. Ouly it is much more frightful when they talk their cruel metaphysics in the name of God ; when they put him in place of the Fate which others more reverently speak of ; when they pretend to build up a faith on the assumption that He is a being whom men generally cannot and should not trust.
Brethren, the Bible does not lead us in this way ! It shows us how we may find another and more ex cellent way. Cain and Abel, in this early portion of it,
i.] CAIN AND ABEL. 11
arc brought before us as both presenting their offerings
to God. But the effect is different. They feel it to ) be different. We are not told how they carne to feel
it ; whether any outward sign or token satisfied the one, I and left the other discontented. The historian has j not time to speak of such trifles. He only makes TIS
understand that they did know it, and that Cain was \ very wroth, and Ids countenance fell. Thereby he at
• once connects the story with human experience, — with the experience of each human being. It is a fact which we cannot dispute, which all the world's history con firms, that some have been the better for their prayers, and some very much the worse ; that some have brought sacrifices and have gone away with their countenances shining as they had been angels, full of affection to their fellow-men, ready to do them all good, — that
• others have gone away with their countenances moody, discontented, wrathful, ready to wreak their
j vengeance on the first creature they met. There are ! these extreme differences, — there may be many degrees
between each extreme — denoting that a blessing or a , curse has followed the offering. It is so in what we
call, formally, religious services; it is so with every
ordinary work and service among our fellow-creatures.
The Bible would not be a true book, if it did not I exhibit this difference to us. We should look to see it
exhibited early in such a record ; for it must be one ,! of those primary characteristics of human beings which
will go through all periods, but which, by some means,
THE SACRIFICES OF [sERir.
make themselves manifest from the first. Having set it before us, we are left to find out much of the ex planation from its own after-revelations. It does not anticipate the discoveiy which it is to make to us, by degrees, of the nature of Him who was governing both the shepherd and the tiller of the ground. It does not anticipate the discovery it will make to us of the mystery of evil, and of the sense of righteousness and good, which lay in the hearts of both — because they were not shepherds and tillers of the ground only, but men. It does, however, hasten at once to remove that which would make all these after-revelations incredible and self-contradictory. It does say, that God spake to Cain, and said, ' Wliy art thou wroth ? and why is thy countenance fallen ? If thou doest well, slialt tliou not be accepted ? and if tliou doest not well, sin lletli at the door.' It does denounce at the very outset, the notion of a self-willed arbitrary being, who is making decrees for men, what they shall be, or what they shall not be; who of his pleasure is choosing one and rejecting another. It does set before us a righteous Being, who holds discourse with His creature, who treats him as a being made for right, and capable of following right ; as only following wrong when he yields to the sin which lieth at the door} and not to that righteous Guide who is close to the same door, urging him to take the true and upward path. It does make us perceive that Cain defied that righteous Being and chose the evil guide, when he denied that he was his brother's keeper, and
i.] CAIN AND ABEL. 13
became his murderer. It does show us that the issue of this crime, not of some fatal necessity, was, that he went out of the presence of God ; that he became shut up in his atheism.
And thus, my brethren, the Bible brings this history to a test which we may all use, if we will ; by which we may prove whether it is true or not ; by which we may rid ourselves of hard and artificial interpretations of it. We know — we positively know — what the Cain offering is, because we have presented the like ourselves. We have prayed ; and then have complained, just as the Jews did, that it has all been in vain, that no good has come of it. We have made sacrifices, and we have wondered that we got no reward for them. Perhaps we have been angry that, being so good, we have not been more favoured by fortune and circumstances. Perhaps we have been angry that, trying so hard to make ourselves good, we have succeeded so little. Perhaps we have had a general notion that God could not be persuaded to be gracious to us and to forgive us, in spite of all the sacrifices we have offered, and that we must try others which are more costly. In all cases, the coun tenance lias fallen ; in all cases, we have gone forth with thoughts that were anything but gracious and brotherly to our fellow-men. We have thought of them as more | in the favour of Heaven, on one ground or another, than ; we were ; we have felt envious and spiteful to them, if I we have done them no actual mischief. Assuredly, this is the Cain spirit in us all; assuredly, we have often
14 THE SACRIFICES OF [SERM.
been led by it ; and, if so, have we not had a proof, the clearest which could be given, that it was not an arbitrary Being we were opposing, but a righteous and gracious Being ? Was not our sin that we supposed Him to be an arbitrary Being, whom we, by our sacri fices and prayers, were to conciliate ? Was not this the false notion which lay at the root of all our discontent, of all the evil thoughts and acts which sprung out of it ? We did not begin with trust, but with distrust ; we did not worship God because we believed in Him, but because we dreaded Him — because we desired His presence, but because we wished to persuade Him not to come near us.
And does not this experience, brethren, enable us to understand the nature of that true and better sacrifice which Abel offered ? Must not all its worth have arisen from this, that he was weak, and that he cast himself upon One whom he knew to be strong ; that he was ignorant, and that he trusted in One, who he was sure must be wise ; that he had the sense of death, and that he tui-ned to One whence life must have come ; that he had the sense of wrong, and that he fled to One who must be right ? Was not his sacrifice the mute expres sion of this helplessness, dependence, confidence ? And was not the acceptance of it, the pledge that the Creator is goodness and truth, and that all creatures have good ness and truth, so far as they disclaim them in them selves and seek them in Him ?
If this be the case, we have had a glimpse into the
i.] CAIN AND ABEL. 15
nature of sacrifice, and into its connection with the nature of every human creature, which we may hope will expand into clearer and brighter vision.
We have seen that sacrifice has its ground in some thing deeper than legal enactments. We may have to consider how such enactments affect it ; how they may strengthen or weaken the principle which is implied in it. We have seen that sacrifice infers more than the giving up of a tliinrj. We shall have to ask how the person who presents it may be enabled to give up him self, and into what errors he may fall in his effort to do that. We have seen that sacrifice has something to do with sin, something to do with thanksgiving. We must ask the Bible to tell us what it has to do with each, and how, in its application to each of these purposes, it may be perverted. We have contemplated it in the case of two individuals. We ought to inquire whether the principle of it belongs to society, and how the social and the individual sacrifice are connected, how they may be separated to the peril of the community and its members. We have seen that sacrifice is offered by man, and yet that the sacrifice becomes evil and immoral, when the man attaches any value to his own act, and does not attribute the whole worth of it to God. It will be our duty to ask, how it is possible that man should present the sacrifice, of which God is at once the Author and the Acceptor. These are questions which the history we have considered to-day suggests, but does not answer. We shall have reason enough to be
16 THE SACRIFICES OF [SERM.
thankful for it, if it has discovered to us a principle which can never forsake us, or be contradicted, at any step of our future progress ; •which will receive illus tration as much from our own lives as from the word of God ; which we deny whenever we try to interpret the one without the aid of the other.
My brethren, wre are told, in the Gospel for to-day, that ' as Jesus was going up with His twelve Apostles to Jerusalem, He said to them, The Son of Man shall b& delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spite fully erdreated, and spitted on : and they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death ; and the third day He shall | rise again.' The twelve Apostles, says the Evangelist, 'understood none of these things, and this saying was. hid from them, neither understood they the things which , ivere spoken.' Those who were to be teachers of the world had not yet learnt the mystery of sacrifice. They heard of it from the lips of Him whom they called i Lord and Master. His words at present fell dead upon their ears. But the story goes on : ' And it came to pass, that as He was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain Hind man sat by the wayside begging : and hearing the multitude pass by, he ashed what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And they which went before rebuked him, that he shoidd hold his peace. But he cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought unto Him ; and ivhen lie
i.l CAIN AND ABEL. 17
J
was come near, He asked him, saying, What wilt tJwn ' that I should do unto thee ? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto Him, Receive < thy sight ; thy faith hath saved thee.'
That blind man entered into the meaning of sacri fice, into which the Apostles had not yet entered. He felt his blindness. He trusted in a Deliverer. He i could believe that that Deliverer had given himself up to bear his infirmities and carry his sicknesses. He i could expect that there were wonders of His mercy, * which a still more complete sacrifice would be needed to reveal.
SERMON II.
NOAH'S SACRIFICE. (Lincoln's Inn, 1st Sunday in Lent, March 5, 1851.)
' And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord ; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt -offerings on the altar. And the Lord smclled a sweet savour ; and the Lord said' in his heart, Twill not again curse the ground any more for man's sake ; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth ; neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have- done. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold' and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.' — GENESIS viii. 20-22.
AFTER the story of Cain and Abel, there is 110 further allusion to sacrifice in the records of the world before the flood. But the meaning of these two sacrifices goes through the history. The confession of dependence and trust on a righteous Being, from whom life came,, which made Abel's offering an acceptable one; the proud feeling of Cain, that he had something to give, which led to discontent when he received nothing- in
O
return for his gift — which led to murder when he had someone upon whom he could put forth his power, —
SEK.M. ii.] NOAH'S SACRIFICE. 19
these are the characteristics of the period, because that period exhibits the characteristics of human beings in the simplest and earliest stage of their development. The faith of the patriarchs who called on the name of the Lord, — who walked with God, — who begat sons and daughters, and died, — who looked for someone to comfort them concerning the ivork and toil of their hands because of the ground which the Lord had cursed, was merely an expansion of that faith which had been the blessing of Abel and the cause of his death. The violence and corruption with which the earth is said to have been filled, were merely the natural outcomings of that unbelief in right, that confidence in might, of which Cain had been the first example. Do not let us say, as some have said, that Abel was a religious man, and Cain an irreligious man ; that is not the Bible language, either concerning them or their successors. The acts of Cain are just as religious as those of his brother; one brought a sacrifice just as well as the other. We have no reason to suppose, that there may not have been abundance of religion among those upon whom the flood came. The old words are the true words. Abel was a rigliteous man ; his sacrifice was offered to a righteous Being : it expressed faith in such a Being. Cain was unrighteous ; he believed in power, and nothing else. His sacrifice was presented to a power, and was designed to win its favour. It was not presented to God ; it was no worship of Him ; it could not be acknowledged by Him. It was the same
c 2
20 NOAH'S SACRIFICE. [SERM.
afterwards. Noah, we are told, ivas a just man and perfect in his generations, and he if allied witli God. ' This language is in strict harmony with all that we read afterwards in the Old Testament Scriptures ; it is carried out and interpreted in the New. Noah i reverenced right and justice ; he ordered his family '. well ; he lived in the presence of an unseen Being who is right and true, and who had appointed him to be the ^ head of a family. These are the best modern equi- , valents we can find for the older and nobler phraseo- j logy. They make the rest of his life intelligible to i us. Such a man, seeing violence, tyranny, ill-doing, I brutality all around him, knew assuredly that this was j not meant to be ; that God had not made the world ] for this. He was sure it could not last ; no matter I how many were taking part in the evil, and were | sanctioning it in their neighbours ; no matter whether j the race of Seth was defiled with it as well as the race \ of Cain ; no matter whether the whole scheme of men's J lives, aye, and the scheme of their religion, was framed ] on the notion that wrong was tolerable or inevitable, and that the powers above might be bribed to overlook i it. Such a state of things had a curse upon it ; God's own curse. He knew it ; for he walked with God. A Teacher, whom he could not see with his eyes, but who , was with him, opened his heart to know that every injustice and every lie is contrary to his nature, — con trary to the order He has established; that He is j actually fighting against injustice and lies in His
ii.] NOAH'S SACRIFICE. 21
universe, and in every being upon it; that He will prevail. This Noah learnt, not by any sagacity of his, not because he was in different circumstances from the men about him, or had a finer temperament than theirs ; but because he confessed the Voice of God who was speaking to him, warning him, judging him ; be cause he feared to disobey that Voice. It was the God of his fathers, who made him understand this, — the God to whom they had listened, and whom they had worshipped. He had not ceased to be ; He would not cease to be. With that knowledge of the past and present comes also knowledge of the future. One is as hard for man to read as the other. God interprets each to him by the other. Noah was verily certain that there was an end designed for the wickedness of men. When it would come he might not know ; but it would come ; — the day and the hour were determined though they might not concern him. Such faith, once cherished, is fed day by day ; it grows stronger through the very sight of the evils which are so appalling; it becomes deeper as they become deeper; it be comes also more distinct and definite. The man who holds it, acts upon it; he goes on in a plain, simple course, dwells with his family, begets sons and daughters. By the orderliness and quietness of his life, he becomes a witness against the turbulent, self- willed world, in the midst of which he is dwelling. By degrees he receives light respecting the nature of the punishment which will overtake that world. He is
22 XOAH'S SACRIFICE. [SEEM.
taught by God how to act as a provident man should act when a danger is impending : how to warn his neighbours of it, that they may escape it too. There is called forth in him, through his faith, the foresight and wisdom, which are every day departing from the heart less, anxious self-seekers, who are in continual dread of danger, and are continually hunting after safety and comfort. But there is called forth in him also, by this same faith, an earnest interest in his fellow-men. He separates from them, only that he may be a witness to them of the good which they are flying from, and which he claims for himself and his family, because he believes that God designs it for the creatures He has formed.
If we give any different explanation from this of the act of Noah in preparing the ark, we contradict the words of the New Testament as well as the Old ; we take the sense and moral out of the story ; we make it immoral and selfish. And by doing so, we make the sacrifice which Noah offered when the flood had sub sided, and he came forth into the restored world, a Cain sacrifice ; we do not find in the narrative of it — what is assuredly there — a beautiful and consistent exposition of the reason why the Lord had respect to Abel's offering, and not to his brother's.
There is an evident difference between this history and the one of which I spoke last Sunday. There were no particulars given us respecting the form and method of Abel's or Cain's sacrifice. It was merely said, that
n.] NOAH'S SACRIFICE. 23
one brought of the firstlings of his flock, the other of the fruits of the ground. Now we are told of an altar which Noah builded, of his choosing out clean beasts and clean fowls, of his offering a burnt-offering on the altar. You may have observed how accurately the form of the ark is described in the previous chapter, and how all the arrangements of it are referred to the divine Teacher. It is assumed that a stage has come in the life of the •world, when the working in wood and iron is no longer the fruit of men's eagerness to put forth powers which they are not fit to exercise ; that these powers can now be used and cultivated for the worthiest ends under the highest guidance. Here, under the same inward guidance, the mound of turf gives place to the altar which is built ; an order is discovered in the dignity of the inferior creatures ; the worthiest are selected for an oblation to God ; the fire which consumes, the flame which ascends, are used to express the intention of him who presents the victim. If you asked him to tell you what these visible things signified to him, he could have given you no answer. At a later time men might have muttered one which would have a certain sense, but not a very clear sense ; now they would simply act on their intuition, and let it justify itself as it could. Noah would be sure that it had not come from himself ; that God had awakened it in him ; if He had something different to teach other men elsewhere, so let it be. All he had to do, was to follow where a light, which liad not deceived him hitherto, was pointing the way.
24 NOAH'S SACEIPICE. [SERM.
And, I think, we must all feel that there was an inward progress in the heart of the man, corresponding to this progress in his method of uttering his submission and his aspirations. There was a certain solitude in the condition of the patriarchs of the old world — not an absolute solitude, for that can never be where there are husbands and wives, fathers and children, where they look upon the graves of those who have gone before them, and upon the faces which are beginning to express wonder and hope — but still the solitude of men who feel that they have little to do with the greatest portion of the earth, inhabited or uninhabited; who think of what lies beyond their own homes only as full of crime. But the man who came out of the ark, and builded an altar to the Lord, must have felt that he was repre senting all human beings ; that he was not speaking what was in himself so much as offering the homage of the restored universe. He had prepared an ark for Hie saving of liis house; but that ark had been for the saving of the race which God had made in His own image, of all the races which He had made subject to that. The simple mind of a patriarch could not take in so vast a thought as this ; what need that he should take it in ? It was true ; if he could not com prehend it, he yet could speak out the marvel and the awe of his heart to Him who knew all.
What was Noah's sacrifice but this ? As childlike as that of the man who first gazed on the strange world, and could not interpret it; who first saw death, and
ii.] NOAH'S SACKIFICE. 25
wanted to be told what it signified ; wlio first felt sin, and would fly from it. As childlike as his ; perhaps more childlike, because the oppression of ages and of the sin which had been done in them, of the deaths which had been died in them, was greater than that which the other could experience — and therefore the need of cast ing it on someone who could bear it was greater ; and because the sense of deliverance and redemption and restoration — the assurance that the righteous God was a deliverer, redeemer, restorer — must have been such as none could have had who had not seen how all the powers of the world were used for the punishment of those who had braved Him instead of believing in Him; and how, nevertheless, the order stood fast, and came forth fresher and fairer out of the ruin. In what words was it possible to express a sense of man's greatness — the king over the mightiest animals — and of man's little ness in the presence of the elements which had been let loose upon him ; of the intimate, inseparable union between man and man ; of the bitter strifes which tore them asunder ; of the awful nearness of men to their Maker ; of their estrangement from Him ? How could he and his sons say : ' We confess that Thou hast made 1 us rulers; help us to govern; we know that the world 1 can crush us ; help us not to fear it, but Thee. We ' are sure that we have rebelled against Thee; we bless ' thee that Thou upholdest us and unitest us to Thee?' The altar, the clean beasts, the fire, and the man presenting the animals to Him whom he cannot see,
2(3 NOAH'S SACRIFICE. [SERM.
in the fire as one of the mightiest ministers of His will, these were the signs which supplied the want of language, or translated the language of earth into that of Heaven.
If that translation is possible, the converse is possible also. The next clause of our text is an example of the way in which the mysteries of Heaven may be presented in the forms of earth : e And the Lord smellcd a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse tJte ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have done.' ' How gross/ exclaims the critic of our day, ' this ' phraseology is ! Smclled a sweet savour! How can we * tolerate such modes of speaking when they are applied ' to the Divine Majesty ? ' Have you ever thought what other modes of speech you would use as a substi tute for these ? Have you ever considered whether abstract modes of speech would convey the same truth, half so effectually, half so reverently, as those which are drawn from the wonderful senses with which God has endowed us ? If these senses seem to you vulgar, not full of meaning and mystery, it is a pity ; there is much in what is nearest you which you have not re flected on ; you had better dwell for awhile on the acts with which you are most familiar, before you travel round earth and to the stars. If expressions that have no sensible correspondents please you better, at least try to give yourselves some account of them ; if they are
ii.] NOAH'S SACRIFICE. 27
more intellectual, be sure that you understand them ; if you can ascend on these wings more rapidly into the empyrean, be sure that you do ascend, and that you bring some authentic and credible reports of what you find there. Take care that you do not come back with the blank and melancholy tidings — the most dismal which human beings can hear — that there is an abstrac tion there, and not a Father ; a negation of all that we possess and admire below, not one in whom is the full ness of light and glory, of which all things hero serve as faint hints and likenesses. Perhaps, after some experience of what a phantom you. have created for yourselves, by merely emptying Him whom you profess to adore of all that connects Him with human beings, you may begin better to appreciate the book which teaches us to see everywhere in the world of sense the tokens of that connexion ; which shows us everywhere some steps of the ladder which is set upon the ground we tread, and which reaches to the throne of God. The smelling the sweet savour of a sacrifice imports, I think, more vividly, more truly, than almost any image could, the complacency and satisfaction of the God who had desired men to obey Him, to confide in Him, to seek Him, with acts which testified their submission, their trust, their craving for more perfect communion. And the words which follow as clearly intimate the progres sive, and yet the permanent, character of the divine education and government. The flood was necessary in one period of man's discipline and growth ; it would
28 NOAH'S SACRIFICE. [SERM.
not need to be repeated in another. It had not taken, and could not take away sin ; that was not its object — the imaginations of man's heart remained evil continu ally, as they were before. But it had declared the unchangeableness of God's righteous order; that that would bend to no transgression ; that that would over come all who set up mere power and disorder against it. And now the same order would assert itself by the regular succession of seed-time and harvest, of day and night, of summer and winter. Apparent breaches in the regular course of events, surprising visitations, prove at times what the evenness and persistency of nature proves habitually — that the just God, of whom man is the image, against whose laws he is so continu ally striving, is the Author and Ruler of all things.
The foundation of sacrifice, as we find it set forth in these early records of the Bible, is laid in this fixed will of God ; in His fixed purpose to assert righteousness ; in the wisdom which adapts its means to the condition of the creature for whose sake they are used ; in the graciousness which seeks by all these means to bring man out of a wrong state, to establish him in his true state. The sacrifice assumes eternal right to be in the Ruler of the universe, all the caprice to have come from man, from his struggle to be an independent being, from his habit of distrust. When the sense of dependence is restored to man by the discovery of his own impotence — when trust is restored by the dis covery that the Lord of all seeks his good — he comes
ii.] NOAH'S SACRIFICE. 29
to make surrender, he brings the sacrifice which is the expression of his surrender. If he is maintaining a struggle with his own tendency to self-will and dis obedience, if he is striving to submit, then the sacrifice is the regular expression of the purpose of his life; he is learning every day that the imagination of the thoughts of his heart is evil continually ; therefore, he has more necessity every day of escaping from himself — of escaping to God. And in doing so, he is confessing the government of God over the world, of which he is but one inhabitant ; the ordinance of seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, day and niijld, in which every man around him is as much concerned as he is. He is confessing the government of God over himself, because he is a man formed in His image ; capable of being right only so far as He reflects that image ; capable of doing right only so far as he is the instrument of fulfilling God's will. And that also is equally true of all about him. He desires to be delivered from the darkness which hinders him from entering into God's light that is shining so clearly and gloriously, if there were eyes to behold it, upon his whole race. I wish you to see how ever lasting and universal that principle is, which we have discovered in the act of Noah, when he came forth from the ark and saw that the world which had been covered with waters was the same goodly world still ; when he felt that he and his wife and his sons and his daughters had been more the objects of the care
30 NOAH'S SACRIFICE. [SERM.
and watchfulness of God than any of the things which He had created, though all these had been dear to Him ; when he received the sure witness that the same God would be with his sons and his sons' sons to what ever part of the earth they might travel — that He would never forget the works of His own hands.
And have we not an equal right to say that the principle, which is expressed in the words that declare the complacency of God in the burnt- offering which Noah offered upon the altar, is everlasting and uni versal ? Have we the least ground for thinking that He accepts coldly and distantly the homage of men's hearts, and acts, and words ; that He is not well pleased with it ? Is not the joy with which any parent receives the free habitual service of a child striving to bo dutiful, and the submission of one who has been un- dutiful, the faint image of the joy with which the Father of lights receives him who wishes to dwell at home, as well as the prodigal who has just recollected that he has a home to which he may return ? If,, indeed, the thought intrudes itself into the elder brother's heart ; ' I have earned a right to my father's 1 favour by my daily offerings ; who is he that comes 1 from dwelling with harlots to eat the fatted calf ?' — if the thought intrudes itself into the younger brother's heart ; ' By some sacrifices of mine I may purchase 1 again that which I had lost — I may persuade my 1 father to overlook my wanderings and to free me from ( the punishments which they deserve at his hands,' —
ii.] XOAH'S SACKIFICE. 31
tlio sacrifice of each becomes a Cain sacrifice ; there is no submission in it, no trust in it ; there can be no sweetness in the savour of it, for there is that in it which is not of God, which has no fellowship with God, which is hateful to God — pride, malice, envy. These habits haunt every man ; none can say, I am free from them. But if he comes to offer sacrifice to God, he comes to confess and seek deliverance from them as from the greatest and most direful curses that can rest iipon him in this world or in the world to come.
These principles, seeing that they are involved in the relation of man to God — in his eternal order — were the same in Noah's days as in ours, the same in Abel's as in Noah's. But we have learnt something from Noah's sacrifice which we could not learn from Abel's ; something more of the social nature of these offerings ; something more of their meaning, as following after long centuries of evil, and after a wonderful redemp tion; something more of the intercourse and sympathy which exist between him who sacrifices and Him to whom the sacrifice is made. Noah, we felt, was re presenting the race in his sacrifice; he was confessing the evil in him, and in his fellows, which had brought
9 ' O
ruin upon the world, and was confessing the wisdom which had preserved it. These are great steps onward in the history.
But, after all, are we not conscious that they are mere hints of truths which must be unfolded, as they could not be in Abel's sacrifice or in Noah's ? The
32 NOAH'S SACRIFICE. [SERM. n.
representative of humanity after the flood lived his nine hundred years, and died. Has humanity no continual representative ? The imagination of men's thoughts remained evil continually after the fire had ascended from the altar. Is there no offering which has power to reach the heart and to purge it ? That sweet sacri fice was presented, the flame went out, the incense eva porated, and foul pestilent vapours rose from the earth and grew thicker with each generation. Is there no altar from which the flame is ever ascending, no swTeet savour, of which God may say always : ' With this I am ' well pleased. For the sake of this I tuill dwell ivith ' men and walk with them, and they shall be my people, 1 and I will be their God : and their sins and iniquities ' I will remember no more ' ?
SERMON III.
TIIE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. (Lincoln's Inn, 3rd Sunday in Lent, March 19, 185i.)
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham : and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only sou Isaac, whom thou lovcst, and get thee into the land of Moriah ; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.' — GENESIS xxii. 1, 2.
I SAID some Sundays ago, that the offering of Abel did
not imply a precept enjoining sacrifice, but that it did
imply a revelation from God. That revelation was not
an exceptional, or anomalous accident. It was just as
much presumed in the ordinary tillage of the ground as
in the most awful worship. The doctrine of the Bible,
as it comes out to us in the book of Genesis, — as it is
consistently evolved in every subsequent book — is, that
man would not be a thinking, reasonable, moral being,
I if there were not an intercourse between him and his
| Creator, — if God were not awakening him continually
! to a sense of that which he has to do, and of the priii-
i ciples upon which he is to do it.
D
31 THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. [SERJT.
If Revelations of this kind are not strange and irre gular, but orderly, the sacrifice which responded to them seemed to be of the same character. It was the most simple way, — more simple and primitive than words, — in which a man could confess that there was a higher Being, whom his eye could not see, who was near him, acting upon him, ruling him, causing the- seeds which he had sown to bring forth, giving life to those creatures which were His servants and which were- also subject to death. The wonder, awe and mystery of the universe, and of that creature who alone was capable of feeling awe and wonder, and of being per plexed by a mystery, came forth in that offering. It explained him, though he was not able to explain it.
But it was intimated to us in this first story, that sacrifice may be the expression of the two most contrary feelings and states of mind ; — the most contrary, and yet lying so close to each other in every man that only the eye of God can distinguish them, till they distinguish themselves by the acts which they generate. Sacrifice- may import the confession of a child, who feels that he has nothing, and is a mere receiver. It may import the sense in a man that he has something to offer which his Maker ought to accept. It may import the- trust of a child depending on One from whom it believes- all good comes, aware that what is not good is its- own. It may import the hope of a man — an uncertain; sullen hope — that he may persuade the power he- supposes is ruling, to give him some benefit, — to avert
in.] THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. 35
from him some danger. It may be an act of simple giving up, of surrender ; it may be an act of barter, — a bargain to relinquish a less good on the chance of obtaining a greater. These different tempers are indicated in Scripture, by the effects which follow the offering of the fruits and of the animal. It ends with Abel becoming himself the sacrifice., Cain the murderer.
The sacrifice of Noah led us on to another stage in the development of the idea of sacrifice. Trust in a righteous and life-giving Being was, in his case, as much as in that of Abel, the meaning of his offering. The disorder and unrighteousness of the world had destroyed it ; its order had been preserved ; God had upholden it and would uphold it; Noah represented his own race and all the creatures that bowed to that race, when he took of the clean beasts and offered them to the Lord. The delight which the Lord is said to have taken in that act, is the testimony that He sym pathises with His creatures ; that He recognises them as meant for fellowship with him ; that He is leading them on, by all His secret government, to know that that fellowship is the foundation of their intercourse with each other.
The passage 1 have read to you, this afternoon, implies what we have learnt from both the others ; but it leads us much farther into the heart of the subject. It is very needful to remark, that we are not yet come
to the period of decrees and regulations concerning
D 2
36 THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. [SERJI.
worship or anything else. The book of Genesis be comes absolutely unintelligible — its distinction from the one which follows is altogether lost — if we suppose the patriarchs to be living under a code, or under any of the conditions which belong to an organised nation. They are simply men on a plain, taking care of flocks and herds, dwelling in tents. Their apparent difference from those who surround them is, that they have made less progress in social arts and social government. The real difference is, that they believe and that they hope. They believe in a righteous Lord, who has given them their flocks, and their man-servants and maid-servants. They hope for a Seed in which all the families of the earth arc to be blessed. Those who dwell in the cities of the plain have had their kings and armies for one knows not how long. Abraham is just at the beginning of the political life, which is nearly at an end with them. In Egypt there are priests and sacrifices ; a hierarchy ; a kingdom. In Assyria there are already the rudi ments of an empire, and probably works of art indi cating a knowledge of animal forms and a singularpower of representing them. Abraham has to learn the very elements of worship, what a priesthood exist for, how man comes to have that dominion over animals which the monuments of Nineveh express ; how he is liable to abuse that dominion till it turns into slavery. I have endeavoured to point out these facts to you before, and to show how the discoveries which prove the might and wisdom and antiquity of Asiatic or African empires,
in.] THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. 37
prove also the necessity of a society so entirely ele mentary, so purely pastoral, as that which the first book of the Bible presents to us ; in order that the whole civilisation of the world might not turn out to be its curse and its ruin, by proceeding on principles utterly inverted, inhuman, false. I am now desirous to apply this observation to the particular case before us, to consider by what process the father of the faithful was instructed in the doctrine of sacrifice, while so many people around him were practising sacrificial rites, and were connecting them with the outward and inward economy of their lives.
A man who has been what is called lucky or fortunate in all his enterprises, may feel as if he had no one to thank but himself for what he possesses, or, if anything but himself, some power which does not especially want his thanks, and will not set any store by them. A man who has failed in whatever he has undertaken, may look upon earth and heaven as if they were conspiring against him. But a man who has waited long for some good, which has seemed to him more blessed each day that has-no£ brought it to him, and yet has also seemed each day more improbable — who has been sure from the first that, if it ever came, it must be a gift from one who watched over him and cared for him, and who, for that very reason, has gone on trusting that ho shall receive it — yes, growing in trust as the natural difficulties looked more insurmountable, — such a man, when the dream of his heart becomes a substantial realit3T, has a sense of
38 THE SACEIFICE OF ABRAHAM. [SERM.
grateful joy, wliicli turns to pain, which is actually oppressive, till it can find some outlet. Yet what outlet can it find ? what can he do for the giver more than rejoice and wonder at the gift ; more than say, ' It is thine ? ' Nothing, perhaps ; but how can he say that ? how can he utter what he means to one who, he knows, is the source of all he has, and can need nothing from him ? What can he offer ? — a mere sign or symbol ? — a sheep which he would slay for his own food, and which he would not miss out of his flock ? — a miserable sample of the fruits which the earth is pouring out to him ? It must surely be something better, more precious than any of these. His own heart seems to scorn such pre sents : must not the heart of Him to whom he brings them ?
The description I have given is precisely the descrip tion which, in simpler, truer language, the book of Genesis gives us of Abraham. He has waited, longed, feared, trusted, received. The child has come to him in his old age, — a child to whom blessings are attached, which he cannot measure, which stretch into the farthest future. From him are to come as many as the stars or as the sands. It is indeed a child of laughter and joy. He has lived for this ; as he looks upon it, it appears to him the pledge and witness of an infinite, inexhaust ible life. The child has brought him nearer to God ; though he has believed in him so long, it is as if he now believed in Him for the first time, — so much is he carried out of himself, such a vision has he of One who
in.] THE SACRIFICE OF ABEAIIAM. 39
orders ages past and to come, and yet is interested for him, is interested for the feeblest of those whom He has made. Out of such feelings comes the craving for the power to make some sacrifice, to find a sacrifice which shall be not nominal but real.
Many strange and perplexing thoughts invaded men' s minds in past times, as they invade men's minds now. When they became very tormenting, then, as now, people betook themselves to some wise man. They asked, What do these thoughts mean ? whence do they come ? what are we to do in consequence of them ? They got various answers. The answers, in different places, shaped themselves into different rules and maxims ; forms of service and devotion were grounded upon them ; above all, sacrifices were suggested, which might satisfy the desires of the creature, perhaps might satisfy the demands of his ruler. The book of Genesis .says, ' GOD did tempt Abraham.' It leads us back to the source from which the thoughts that were working in him were derived. It says broadly and distinctly, This seed did not drop by accident into the patriarch's mind ; it was not self -sown ; it was not put into him by the suggestion of some of his fellows/ It was part of the discipline to which he was subjected that these questions should be excited in him. It was his divine Teacher who led him on to the terrible conclusion : ' The sacri-
* fice that I must offer is that very gift which has caused ' me all my joy. That belongs to God. I can only ex-
* press m'y dependence upon God, my thankfulness to
40 THE SACRIFICE OF ABBAHA3T. [SERM.
' Him, by laying my son upon the altar/ If it was true that he had been called out by the living and true God to serve Him and trust Him and be a witness for Him — if it was true that he had received his child from God — it was true also, he could not doubt it, that this was a command, that it was a command directly addressed to him ; that he was to obey it.
' But is it not very frightful to think that such an ' impression as this could be made on the heart of a good ( man? — shouldbecome a fixed purpose in him ? — that he ' should passively surrender himself to it ? If the case 1 was peculiar, if Abraham's experience was to be no pre- ' cedent for other men, what is the history of the Bible ' worth, what does it teach, whom is it to guide ? If it t was a precedent, then have not the followers of it been ' the fanatics, whose opinions we consider signs of mad- ' ness; whose open acts,beingoutragesupon society, states { are obliged to restrain and punish ?' I answer, Before you determine whether Abraham's history is an example or a beacon, try to understand what it is. You say that it is ignominious for a man to be the victim of an im pression. This history says the same. It does not represent Abraham as feeling an impulse to slay his son, and as surrendering himself to that impulse ; still less does it represent God as designing that the man should commit that enormity. But it tells us that a man who thoroughly trusted God, — thoroughly believed Him to be a righteous Being, — was thoroughly per suaded that he cared for him, and had proved that He
in.] THE SACEIFICE OF ABRAHAM. 41
did by giving him a son — became convinced that tliis God, for some reason which he could not interpret, claimed his child of him again. It was a horrible thought that this was the only victim with which God could be content, a more horrible thought still that lie was to slay the victim. Do you suppose that it was less horrible to Abraham than it would have been to a man of less faith ? I believe it was horrible precisely in proportion to his faith. For it was all in all to him to think that he was serving a true God, a Judge who must do right. And here something seemed to be demanded of him which was not right — which was wrong. And yet who made the demand ? Whence but from God had the deep conviction proceeded, that he was to offer this sacrifice, and no other ? An Assyrian or Egyptian might have shrunk from such a deed through a paternal instinct; but there could have been nothing very tremendous to him in supposing that a god had decreed it. If the soothsayer or priest told him so, he could have little doubt that to obey would be the safer course, though he might not have courage to follow it. But with Abraham, that which was almost nothing to them, was everything. To give up his confidence in God, to regard Him as a man who did what He liked to do, was to give up his calling, his covenant, all that made existence a blessing and not a curse. Therefore, he must know what this contradiction signified. He could not quench the thought if he tried. And what comfort would there have been in such a trial ? How
42 THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. [SEEM.
can a man who lias reposed in the justice and affection of a fellow-man, entertain a suspicion that he is requiring something of him which is inconsistent with "both, and merely let that suspicion dwell as one of the citizens of his heart ? Will it not cause a revolt among all the rest ? He can have no peace till he sees through his doubt, till it is cleared entirely away. And if he has perfectly trusted in his friend, if he is one to whom he has always bowed in submission, who has taught him all that he knows of what is right and true, he will say : ' I do ' not understand this suggestion of yours. If you mean ' by it what I mean, all is over with me, — my faith is ' gone. But that cannot be. I will leave nothing 1 undone that will help me to find out what it is you ' really wish of me ; at all events, I will give myself into ' your hands.'
Conceive such a trust as never can be put in the righteousness of any human creature, and this is Abraham's story. He must know what God's meaning is ; he is certain that in some way it will be proved that He has not designed His creature to do a wicked and monstrous thing, and yet that there is a purpose in the revelation that has been made to him ; that a submission and a sacrifice, such as he had never made yet, were called for now. He takes his son ; he goes three days' journey to Mount Moriah; he prepares the altar, and the wood, and the knife ; his son is with him ; but he has already offered up Idmself. And now he is taught that this is the offering which God was
in.] THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. 43
seeking for ; that when he had presented that, he had given the real thing for which he had perceived no sacrifice of a lamb or an ox could be exchanged ; that when the real victim had been slain, the ram caught in the thicket was all that was needed for the symbolical expression of that inward oblation.
And what was the reward ? 'In Messing ' (said the divine voice) 'I will bless thce,in multiplying I will mul tiply tltee.' When this secret had been learnt, — learnt in this plain manner through an act, — when he had done God's will, and been so taught of His doctrine, — every blessing became an actual, vital blessing; every gift that might have been only an outside possession, was changed into a spiritual treasure. He had become free of God's universe ; for he had begun to understand the principle upon which God rules it, and the law of man's position in it. He had found sacrifice to be no one solitary act, no sudden expression of joy, no violent effort to make a return for blessings which we can only return by accepting ; but that it lies at the very root of our being ; that our lives stand upon it ; that society is held together by it ; that all power to be right, and to do right, begins with the offering up of ourselves, because it is thus that the righteous Lord makes us like Himself.
Yes, like Himself ! There was a mystery in this, which Abraham could dimly and awfully look into, which ages to come must unfold. I do not anticipate any of the deeper truths respecting the nature of sacri-
44 THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. [SEEM.
fice, which were hidden in this act, and which God in His own method would bring to light. I only wish you to perceive how perfectly adapted this teaching was to remove those falsehoods which we know beset and tormented the hearts of men in. the old world, and which we still find are besetting and tormenting men in the nineteenth century.
The tradition in old Greece respecting the sacrifice which the god demanded before the fleet could sail for Troy, took possession of the minds of her greatest thinkers. The tragic poet, as he recorded with such ten derness the conflict in the heart of the father, and the preparation for slaying the victim, evidently felt in his devout and earnest spirit, that he was celebrating a vic tory of patriotic over paternal feeling, as well as a sublime though tremendous act of homage to the rulers of nature and of man. On the other hand, the Roman Epicurean poet, translating the description of /Eschylus in language and in a spirit worthy of his model, expressed the most intense disgust and loathing for the whole narrative ; it embodied to him all the crimes of which a belief in divi nities interested in human affairs had been the origin. I think that the conscience of mankind has responded to the sympathy of one poet and the indignant denun ciation of the other ; that it has recognised a positive truth in each, however little it may have been able to bring them into accordance. In our days, we rather value ourselves upon the equity and tolerance with which we can admit that there is something in these opposing
in.] THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. 45
statements ; the misfortune is, that in general we care but little about either. We are impartial critics ; the fear is, that we shall cease to be men, really under standing that those whom we criticise had the same flesh and blood with ourselves ; that there is no in firmity of theirs to which we are not subject, no right and high conviction which we do not want as much as they did. Depend upon it, brethren, we shall be reminded by very decisive evidence of that truth, if we have been shutting our eyes to it. We have not got rid, any of us, of these old dreams about sacrifices ; we cannot get rid of them ; they haunt us in. innu merable ways ; no man, or woman, or child, is unaffected by them : no theory, religious or philoso phical, dispossesses the heart of them. The Atheist has his own notion and method of immolation — his own victims ; you cannot exorcise a fellow-creature of the most radical part of his being by your incantations; they will prove very ineffectual for yourselves. Soft, silken phrases about the superstitions of old times and the enlightenment and benevolence of the present serve well, when men have enough to eat and drink and little to disturb them in themselves or in their fortunes. Try them in any dark hour of individual experience, in any popular convulsions, with men who toil and suffer, and they are found empty and hollow. But if in stead of pretending to disbelieve facts which the history of the world and of yourselves establishes, you will look these facts in the face — if you will ask why this notion
46 THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. [SERJI,
of sacrifice Las been so mighty and so mischievous ? why you must act upon it ? why you feel often as if you could not act upon it without doing evil ? — then, as you are in earnest, as you are seeking, not for the satisfaction of your curiosity, but for the satisfaction of your consciences — these old records of the world will, I am sure, point your path through the mists by which you are encircled, into the clear sunlight. Perhaps you fancied it was a book which tolerated no difficulties, which merely pronounced authoritative sentences. You will find it exhibiting to you men who were beset by the very perplexities which beset you ; unable to find any road through them till they confessed a guide, of whom they lived to testify that He would be ours as much as he was theirs. Perhaps you will suppose that, as it professes to contain divine revelations, it can take no account of those speculations of heathens, to which I have alluded ; that it must treat them as profane, or else pass them by altogether. You will here find the practical reconciliation of those speculations, — the only reconciliation which is not worse than either of them separately. For it shows you why sacrifice must be- precious and dear in the eyes of Him who governs the spirits of men ; why He cannot ask for any sacrifice which a loving father would not make and a loving child would not offer. And you will find in this story of the method by which Abraham came to knowledge and to peace, what must be your course too. You cannot trust God too much. You cannot be too confident
in.] THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. 47
that He himself is guiding you, and that every embar rassment in your thoughts, every complication in your circumstances, is known by Him, is intended by Him as a means to enable you to understand wisdom secretly, that you may show forth the fruits of it openly. The rashness that leads you to act at once upon some im pression, to make some apparently great sacrifice which will startle and astonish other men, is a sign of distrust and of pride. The cowardice that makes you wish to stifle the suggestions of your hearts, the witness of your consciences, has the same origin. Faith in the righteous ness of God gives that prudence or providence which will make you wary of your footsteps, suspicious of your selves. Faith in the righteousness of God gives you that courage which will enable you to move on steadily, calmly, resolutely, certain that you will have light to see what you ought to do, and that in doing it you will know more of the just and gracious mind of God towards all men as well as towards yourselves.
If we follow this teaching, we shall learn that we must be ready to present our souls and bodies, and all that is dear to us, every day as sacrifices to God. And then we may leave it to Him how and when it shall please Him to take these souls and bodies for other services than those to which He has appointed them here. It may be in the battle-field ; it may be on the judgment-seat, like him whom many of you here knew as the accomplished scholar and cordial friend, and whose dying words of wisdom all of us should earnestly
48 THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. [SEEM. in.
lay to heart.1 At sunset or at cock-crowing, 011 the sick-bed, or in the midst of work, the voice may reach any of us. It is enough for us to know whose voice it is, and to what it is summoning us. It is the voice of Him who made a covenant with Abraham ; who has made a better covenant with us. It is calling us to make a real sacrifice, to present ourselves to God. Then we shall see in the thicket the Lamb that has been already slain ; we shall see in that Lamb a Son whom the Father has offered up, and who has gone together with Him in a voluntary and perfect self- oblation.
1 Mr. Justice Talfourd died the Monday before this Sermon was preached.
SERMON IV.
SACRIFICE OF THE PASSOVER. (Lincoln's Inn, 4i7i Sunday in Lent, March 26, 1851.)
And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this ? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage : and it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the first born of man, and the firstborn of beast : therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix, being males ; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem. And it shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes : for by strength of hand the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt.' — EXODUS xiii.
THE book of Exodus, as I intimated last Sunday, introduces that new epoch in the scriptural history of sacrifices, when they begin to be regulated by fixed laws, to be part of a national economy. I say the book of Exodus, for I am anxious that you should distinguish between that and the following book, which is expressly devoted to the subject of sacrifices, and of the tribe which offered them. If we hurried 011 to the lessons which are contained in Leviticus, we should miss a link
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iii the chain of instruction which is quite indispensable. Before we study the institutions of a nation, we ought to know what the nation itself is, upon what foundation its order stands. The second book in the Bible contains the answer to that question, as far as the Jewish nation is concerned. I do not know where we can find the principle of it more accurately, or livingly, set forth than in the verses I have just read to you. Moses supposes a son to be asking a father, in some distant time, about the Passover, which he and his family are keeping. The answer is simple and historical, adapted to the compre hension of a child. But the most learned Israelite would have made it far less satisfactory, would have well-nigh destroyed the meaning of it, if he had tried to give it a more profound and abstract character.
You must consider what the most ignorant of the Israelites who had dwelt in Egypt had seen, — what their descendants in Canaan were likely to see, — before you can appreciate the force, either of the question or of the answer. An organised hierarchy, as I said last Sunday, most probably existed in Egypt in the time of Abraham. The Scripture notices it in the time of Joseph. It must have grown stronger, and have introduced more complicated forms of worship before the time of Moses. The wisdom of the Egyptians may have concerned itself with things in heaven above or in the earth beneath, with the motions of the stars and the processes of agriculture, with nature and art ; but we may be sure that notions respecting the objects of
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worship and the means of propitiating them, were worked into every part of it, and that this was the part of it which would present the most glaring and obvious effects to the looker-on. Sacrifices of various kinds, sacrifices to various divinities, sacrifices to procure the removal of particular local evils or of recurring general •evils, sacrifices to avert the wrath of the gods for transgressions that had been undoubtedly committed, sacrifices for transgressions that were suspected to have been committed, sacrifices regular and habitual, sacri fices new and unwonted for strange emergencies, all these would have been seen or heard of by the slaves in Goshen as well as by the native subjects of the Pharaohs. Much might be hidden from both ; much might be done to impress both with the feeling that the priest or the magician had a lore which he could not communicate : but the material part of the worship would be patent; the very object would be to force that upon the attention of the most vulgar.
Therefore any Israelitish child in the Wilderness who pointed to the paschal lamb and asked, ' What is this ?' may have been supposed to mean, ' Is this like one of ' the sacrifices which you have told me the Egyptians ' offered ? Is this feast like one of the feasts they make ' at their sacrifices ? If it is not so, what is the differ - ' ence ? ' And any child who said to his father in the land of Canaan, ' What is this ? ' would mean in like manner, ' Is this such a sacrifice as the Canaanites or
•* the Phoenicians are offering to their Baal and Astoreth ?
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' If not, tell us what the difference is. Why are we not ' like them ? Why do you bid us keep aloof from their ' worship and their off erin gs ? ' Consider what would have been the natural and expected reply to such a question, supposing the principle upon which the Israelites offered sacrifices had been the same with that on which the Egyptians or the Phoenicians offered them. The child would have heard of some great advantage which this sacrifice was to buy, — of some threatened peril which it was to keep off. It would have been told that the Lord God of the Hebrews was mightier and more terrible than the gods of On or of Ekron ; and, therefore, that, if it was thought necessary to offer them sacrifices with which they would be pleased, it must be far more prudent and necessary to offer them to Him. The consequences of neglecting them would have been pointed out from past experience. ' What might not He who ruled the ' winds and the waves be contriving against them ? How ' likely was it, that He who had favoured their fathers ' might desert them, and choose some more devout 1 suppliants if they neglected Him ! '
Perhaps more refined arguments than these might have been adapted to people with devout spiritual tastes and instincts ; but would not you have thought these, or such as these, exceedingly suitable to the con dition of the uninformed man or boy who is supposed to be taking part in the dialogue ? Would not they be just such as religious teachers, in all countries and ages, have thought were desirable to impress people, not
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capable of understanding high truths, or being influenced by nobler motives, with a salutary fear of omitting duties which it was needful that they should perform ? There can be no doubt that the legislator desired fathers to give their children a deep sense of the sacredness of the national service in which they were engaged, of the exceeding evil that might come from indifference to it. For such a purpose, what course could be so obvious as the one I have pointed out ; what other can we think of that must not be less effectual ?
It is not the course, you perceive, which Moses pre scribes. We can scarcely conceive of one more opposed to it than his. Instead of beginning with saying what was to be gained for those who should perform this service at any given time, he speaks of it as com memorating an act which was done already, which might have been done ages before the conversation occurred. ' By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt' 'We are recollecting an event which 'happened to our fathers' fathers, to men who were ' suffering from evils which we are not suffering from, ' who were bondsmen in a land which we have not seen, ' and are never likely to see/ But again, ' This sacrifice ' which we are offering never did purchase the good- ' will of Him to whom it was presented — was not the c influence by which in past days, any more than in these e days, He was moved to look favourably upon our race. ' He Himself chose our fathers ; He Himself wrought
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' out their deliverance. The origin of it, the whole con- ' duct of it, was in Him. He claimed us for his people : ' by this act our fathers declared, and we declare, that c He is our King. Do you think that we want to ' persuade Him to deliver us from certain mischiefs ' and evils which He has brought upon us ? Why ! we ' know Him only by that name of Deliverer. We were ' in bondage to a tyrant ; He broke our chains. Pharaoh 'was grinding down our fathers with hard tasks, He 'said that He had seen their affliction and pitied them. ' Pharaoh would hardly let us go out of our bondage; ' by fire and by blood, and by the slaughter of the first- 1 born, He obliged him to let us go.3
Still the child or the inquiring man might answer, ' This does not explain the sacrifice ; that has surely ' something to do with punishment and vengeance ; that 1 must be intended to avert punishment and vengeance 'from those who present it. You spoke of a slaughter 1 of the firstborn in Egypt, both of man and beast ; you ' spoke of the firstborn of the Israelites being passed ' over ; you spoke of their offering a lamb, and marking ' the door-posts of their houses with the blood of it. If ' God is the Deliverer of some, He surely executes wrath ' upon others. Do you not offer the lamb and keep this f feast, that you may be the objects of His mercy, not of ' His wrath ? ' ' Most assuredly/ the answer would be,, if it was framed in the spirit of the one which Moses gives us, ' most assuredly we do believe in a God of ' wrath and vengeance — in One who executes wrath and
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' vengeance upon the oppressor, and this without respect ' of persons. His anger may descend upon the king or 1 the subject, upon the Israelite as well as upon the ' Egyptian. It not only may, but we know assuredly ' that it iv ill. His government is not one of accident or ' caprice, but of fixed eternal law. He is the God of 'righteousness, and without iniquity; whatever is un- 1 righteous, iniquitous, sets itself at war against Him ; ' He is pledged to destroy it. Pharaoh was self-willed ; fhe believed in might, not in right; he became an ' oppressor, and his people became oppressors of others, ' while they suffered from his wrong. Therefore, the ' righteous God smote them. Because He was the Deli- ' verer of the poor, and of them that had no helper, He 1 manifested His strength against those who trampled ' upon them, against the proud man of the earth. The ' slaughter of the firstborn tells us what it is that ( causes the great visitations upon the world — what ' overthrows families and kingdoms. Looked at on one ' side, it is their own tyranny, and brutality, and hatred ; * looked at from the other side, it is the righteousness e and truth upon which the world stands, which the ' powers in heaven obey, which none can transgress 1 without encountering that which is mightier. You are ' right, that our sacrifice has to do with the slaughter of ' the firstborn. It is therefore that we sacrifice the 1 firstborn of every beast being male. This is the witness ' we bear, that we hold everything of the righteous Lord, 1 the Redeemer ; thus we declare that we look upon the
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' life of every animal as given by Him ; thus we declare ( that we do not worship this animal life in any creature, ' or in ourselves ; thus we affirm that we have dominion ' over it, and that we are to devote it to the use of that ' which is higher than itself. But all the firstborn of my ' children I redeem. 1 dare not treat them as I treat the ' animals ; I know that they are made in God's image ; ' I know that to slay them upon an altar would not be ' to sacrifice them to God ; He wants them for other ' services than that. But He does want them, and I ' devote them to Him. I declare that they belong to ' Him as much as any beast belongs to Him ; I offer ' them up as sacrifices to Him who has redeemed them ; ' I declare that every day and hour they live, they are ( to bear witness of the redemption He has made for ' them — to prove, by their wrords and acts, that they arc ' servants of One who cares for them and whom they ' can trust, not of a tyrant who uses them as his tools, ' and whom they hate.'
This offering of the firstborn, then, — of the first born of the animals as dead sacrifices, of the firstborn of men as living sacrifices, — was the dedication and consecration of the whole Jewish nation. The first born represented its strength, its vitality, its endurance. This act signified that its strength lay only in its dependence on God's strength ; that its vitality came from the life which is in Him ; that it would endure from generation to generation, because He is the same, and His years fail not. By this earliest token,
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God signified that He had constituted a society upon this divine basis ; a society which would stand so long as it confessed this basis — which would fall as soon as it tried to establish itself upon any other. What was true of the nation as a body, was true of each member of it. He was at once adopted into the covenant ; he came in under this law of sacrifice. Before he could understand anything of its meaning, the devotion and consecration were made on his behalf ; he was put into his right and reasonable position ; he was claimed as a holy thing, separated to the Lord. His parents were bound to assert this privilege for him ; it was the pledge that they looked upon him as their true child ; it was the pledge that they did not look upon him only as their child, but as the child of Abraham ; it was the pledge that they regarded the child of Abraham as united by a living bond to the God of Abraham. To fail in the act which denoted the sacrifice of the individual infant, was to show that they thought nothing of the privilege of being God's servants and witnesses ; that they did not hold that to be the inheritance of their sons ; that they did not send them forth as the soldiers of the -Invisible King. To omit the general annual service which attested the redemp tion and sacrifice of the whole nation — which affirmed that it was a holy nation, separated for holy uses and services — was to show that they were indifferent to their standing as Israelites, and were choosing out some new ground for themselves. To choose that
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new ground was, in fact, to choose a new God. Their calling, as Israelites, was the calling to confess a Redeemer of Israel, a righteous Being who had brought out their fathers from the house of bondage. It was certain that whenever they forgot this confession, — whenever they became careless about the appointed means of expressing it, — they would cease to believe in a Redeemer at all. That name would not be their high tower, their refuge from all enemies. Gradually, if not at once, it would be changed for other names, indicating the most opposite convictions, involving the most oppo site kinds of devotion and sacrifice ; and out of that new name, that new worship, would proceed moral and political plagues and curses, which nothing would avert but a national repentance and a return to the faith which they had cast off.
I wish you to think of these plagues and curses as they are presented to us in the books of the Old Testament, that you may judge how truly human as well as divine the constitution of the Jewish nation was ; how necessarily it was the one because it was the other ; how exactly the Passover sacrifice and the dedi cation of the firstborn expressed the union. To say that belief in God as a Redeemer and a Deliverer is easy and natural for men, that it is their tendency to accept and retain this belief, is to contradict the evidence of all history. Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, every country with which the Jews came in contact, disproved such a dream. No doubt the belief was latent in every one-
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of them ; the more light one has upon their mythology, the more one sees that it is — the more one feels that it was — the truth which lay beneath the existence of every nation and sustained it. This undoubted fact is not at variance with the facts which show that there was a perpetual tendency in the popular mind to let go this truth, to substitute for it the worship of a tyrant — whom they could rarely, through God's mercy, contemplate- in one concentrated form — whom they were obliged to see in a multitude of broken inconsistent forms. The two parts of the evidence illustrate and confirm each other. These popular tendencies, which became moulded into a system by the priests who had first yielded to them, were the causes of a continually increasing super stition, division, brutality, cowardice ; can there be a greater proof that in that which they were resisting and subverting we are to seek for the unity of every people, for the secret of the powers which it put forth ? The Bible, instead of urging any claim of special virtue for the chosen people, is careful, as I have so often remarked, to point out how liable they were to every corruption of other people ; how every element of super stition and division was lying secretly in their hearts ; how it did actually manifest itself at every new oppor tunity, under any fresh provocation from without. The consistency of this testimony throughout all the books of their History and Prophecy, is one of the most curious signs of their unity, a sign which the most careless reader cannot help noticing, but which becomes
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more striking the more we reflect upon it. The plague and curse of the Israelites, as it is represented to us, not in one but in all of these books, was their falling into the acknowledgment of tyrant gods — of brute gods — their losing their faith in the High God, the Redeemer. The words are so familiar, so common place, that one can hardly fix the attention of hearers upon them ; but what a key they are to the history of the old and of the modern world ! All external plagues, famines, wars, are represented as means of reawakening their faith, of recalling the nation and its members from the idols to which they were bowing- down, from the accursed principles which they were exalting to the throne of God. These idols, these accursed divinities, were all connected with sacrifices ; they demanded the continual oblation, the fire upon the altar; they demanded the inward offqring, the giving up of the spirit to that which was immoral and base. The heart was to confess an oppressor as God ; then it must set up some human oppressor, or change the one it had into an oppressor; then it must utter itself in acts of oppression to all beneath. The sacrifice to evil powers embodies all the falsehoods and crimes that are at work in all directions throughout a country ; it gives them their sanction, their inspiration ; it provides for the degradation of those who are not yet utterly degraded; it hinders all efforts for the removal of the most flagrant outward grievances ; it ensures their perpetual increase. It is a Sisyphus toil,
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to better the social maxims or the individual morality of a people which has accepted devils for gods ; the gravitation of the stone downwards is mightier than all your efforts to force it up. Bat if you try the other course, which so many have tried, of denouncing sacri fice as being itself an unreal and mischievous idea, having nothing to do with the life of a nation or of a man — will you help the stone to ascend ? Is not that a monstrous attempt to contradict the experience of mankind, to resist the witness of your own consciences ? You know that sacrifice has been a part of the institu tions of every people under heaven ; you know that every better impulse of your own spirits leads you to it, that every right act you have done has been a sacrifice.
Oh ! then consider manfully if there is not a better course ; if it is not that which the legislator of Israel took, when he explained to his countrymen in his own day, when he bade them tell their children in all days to come, how they might resist the superstitions of the surrounding world, and in themselves; how they might go forth to fight with them ; how they might at last extinguish them. By looking upon themselves as beings surrendered and sacrificed to the God of Truth, to the Deliverer of men, to Him who cares for the oppressed, to Him who puts down the wrong-doer and the tyrant ; by feeling that they held all the powers of their minds and bodies, all the creatures he had committed to them, all their
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outward possessions, as instruments for the great work in which He is engaged ; by keeping up this convic tion in their own hearts, not suffering it to slumber through neglect of any ordinances that affirmed His righteous government and redemption, and united them to their countrymen as His subjects; by teaching these lessons to their sons, bringing them up as brave, hardy, cheerful citizens of God's kingdom and of that land which He had given their forefathers ; by holding all external sufferings and bodily calamities to be nothing, in comparison of the moral diseases which stifle and eat np a nation's spirit ; by regarding the one as a necessary effect of the other, and God's blessed method of curing them : thus Moses instructed the Israelites that they might be a nation indeed, one whicli would be a pattern to the nations, one which, in due time, would break the chains which bound thorn to visible and invisible oppressors. Their patriotism ; their heathenism ; the victories which they won in their weakness ; the contempt into which they fell when they boasted of their strength ; the mighty blessings which they have achieved for the world and have bequeathed to it; the curse that has come on their pride, exclu- siveness, and money worship ; these are the witnesses of the veracity of the history, of the worth and certainty of its principle, which make our petty arguments 011 behalf of either look very pale and contemptible. But it is not for this chiefly that I refer to them. It is because I think we have here set forth to us the
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ground upon which every nation stands now — the ground on which our nation is standing ; the ground which we must each of us feel to be beneath his own feet, if we are not to rock and reel in any great convul sions which may be appointed for us. Let us under stand it well, Brethren ; we too are a people dedicated and sacrificed. To some power or other, good or evil, we must be devoted ; there is no choice about that. It may be to Baal or Moloch or Mammon. It may be to the Lord God of Abraham ; the Redeemer, the Holy One, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; to Him from whom comes the Spirit of Truth and Free dom and Unity. Our fathers said that it was this God, and not any of the others, to which we were offered up. They said that when we were baptized He who breaks asunder the bonds of the captive, chose us as His redeemed children ; that then and there we were sacri ficed to Him and signed with the sign of sacrifice, in token that hereafter we should not be ashamed to con fess the faith of Christ crucified, and to fight valiantly tinder his banner against sin, the world, and the devil. That is our national consecration ; that is our individual consecration. In the strength of that, we may go forth, we are pledged to go forth, against every false prin ciple, and base, dishonourable practice, that enslaves ourselves and that enslaves the world. In the strength of that dedication and sacrifice we are bound to eschew every kind of worship and sacrifice that is not offered to a Righteous and Gracious King and Deliverer ; we
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are bound to watch and suspect the growth of it in ourselves and in our land, — to combat it, as it only can be combated, by continually remembering the true ground and meaning of sacrifice, — by continually recol lecting to Whom it is that we are given up, Who has sealed us, and with what Spirit, as a witness that He has accepted the offering and that we belong to Him. And never for a moment let us try to separate, or dream that we can separate, our individual life from our national. Our vocation is the same in the most private occupations, and when we are fulfilling what are called our duties as citizens. Every duty is a civic duty. We are fighting in our closets for our nation, if we are fighting truly for ourselves ; our soldiers should go out to open battle against the foes of freedom and order with the same recollections, with the same sense of self- devotion as that which we would cultivate at home. Commonly they shame us : there is more simple sur render, more casting away of themselves, not for fame or glory, but simply because it is their calling, their plain duty, than we can pretend to in our most sacred private or public acts of devotion. We should try to learn from them this indifference to effect and to consequences ; we should try to teach them what the true basis of it is, how it is laid deep in God's own claim that we should be like Him, — that we should be witnesses for Him, — that we should do His work. When once we understand that, self-sacrifice can never be an ambitious thing — a fine way to get the reputation of saints or the rewards
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of another world. It will be regarded as tlie true ground of all action; that on which all the blessed relations of life stand ; that upon which all the charities and sympathies of life depend ; that which is at the same time the only impulse to and security for the hard and rough work of the world — for the reluctant but necessary blows which are inflicted upon the miscreants who abuse God-given power to the service of the devil, and the injury of their fellows — for the wrongs which are endured by those who testify to the world that the works thereof are evil. Sacrifice is the common root and uniting bond and reasonable explanation of all those acts which seem in the eyes of men, often in the eyes of those who perform them, most hostile to each other, but which God sees to be essentially alike, and which in due time justify themselves as proceeding from the same children of wisdom, though one may be said to have a devil because he wears camels' hair, and a mightier than he be called a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, because He eats and drinks with publicans and sinners. But Sacrifice cannot have this ennobling and mysterious power — it will be turned into self-glory, and lose its own nature and acquire a devil nature — if it is not contemplated as all flowing from the nature of God ; if it is not referred to Him as its author as well as its end. Think of this as you kneel at the altar, which is more wonderful than any Jewish altar because it speaks of a finished Sacrifice. Think of it as you eat that feast which is like the Jewish Passover, because it is
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individual, because it is common, because it testifies of God as a Redeemer, because it testifies of Him as the avenger of all evil ; but which, is higher than the Jewish Passover, because it is human and universal, because in it we partake of a Sacrifice which has been offered to gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad, — offered that they might be able to offer themselves as children to do their Father's work and will.
SERMON V.
THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. (Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday in Lent, April 2, 1854.)
'And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt-sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish : he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering ; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord : and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by
the door of the tabernacle of the congregation And the
priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt-sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.' — LEVITICUS i. 1-6, and part of 9th verse.
You must now consider the Israelites as an organised nation. They have the Passover, which is to remind them from generation to generation that they are one people, one with their forefathers, one with their de scendants, one because the Lord has redeemed them
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out of the house of bondage, one because He is their King for ever and ever. They have commandments, which tell them that they are not the subjects of a capricious despot, but of a righteous Ruler, who would have them know the laws by which they are governed. They have an interpreter of these laws, and a set of elders or heads of tribes who work with him in deciding the causes which arise between man and man. They have statutes, applicable to particular cases, — punish ments, awarded to specific crimes. They have, lastly, a tabernacle, which goes with the people where they go, — which announces to them the presence of God with them, — which testifies that He is guiding them, — which is said to be a meeting place between them and Him, — in which a whole tribe is set apart to minister, — in which a family of that tribe is consecrated to offer sacrifices. What I am to speak of, to-day, is the rela tion between these sacrifices and the rest of the polity as I have described it, — the relation between them and the distinct Israelites who formed the congregation. I have taken the first verses of the book of Leviticus as my guide in this inquiry. As far as the principle of the national sacrifices is concerned, they are, it seems to me, all that we want. But they are the introduction to a book, to other parts of which I may have occasion to refer for the illustration of their meaning, and for the purpose of showing how the sacrifices for the nation as a body were connected with the sacrifices for its individual members.
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The first words of the passage show us how needful it is that we should understand the principle of the Jewish commonwealth before we examine this insti tution of it. According to the heathen notion of sacri fice, as we considered it last Sunday, the offerings must be always experiments to obtain some benefit, which the power to whom they are presented . can bestow, or to remove some evil which it is likely to inflict. The rules respecting them may have been devised by those whom the people held in most reverence for their wisdom or their sanctity. They may acquire fresh authority from long transmission and observance. But they are always liable to change. New and more extraordinary occasions may demand higher gifts, more august propitiations. Traditions may become more complicated each new stage, almost each new year. The child has experiences unknown to the father. Influences of the heavens upon the earth are detected which had not been before observed. Crimes multiply, and fears multiply with them. Who can tell that the sacrifice, which was available to remove the punish ments which threatened one generation, or one man, may not utterly fail for another ?
(1.) But here the very same voice which proclaimed the Commandments on Sinai is said to announce the nature of the sacrifices, and how, and when, and by whom they are to be presented. The unseen King and Lawgiver is here, as everywhere, making known His Will. Those sacrifices, which it was supposed were
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to bend and determine His Will, themselves proceed from it. To vary them at the suggestion of any priest, or council of priests, under any impulse or inspiration of devotion, or gratitude, or fear, or sense of evil, is to depart from His decrees, to commit one of those transgressions which the sacrifices themselves arc provided to meet.
Consider how immense this difference is ; how the doctrine of Moses reverses all those conceptions, and subverts all those motives, which are supposed by many to be at the basis of sacrifices, which have actually been at work in a vast majority of those who have brought them and enjoined them. But consider how exactly this doctrine accords with that which we found to be involved in the patriarchal sacrifices, when there was no precept enjoining them; how the security of fixed law carries out and expounds the principle to which we found men doing homage when there was no law. The difference between Abel's offering and Cain's, between Noah's and the offerings of the corrupt and violent men against whom he denounced judgments, between Abraham's and those of the cities of the plain, — is precisely that which is maintained in this more advanced stage of society, by the words which were spoken to the children of Israel out of the taber nacle of the congregation.
(2.) That they are said to be spoken there, is the next point to which I would draw your attention. The taber nacle, as I have just said, was the witness of God's
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abiding presence with the people, the pledge that they were to trust Him, and that He sought intercourse with them. From thence proceeded those precepts which have reference to trespasses, transgressions, sins ; and to the methods which an Israelite, feeling that lie had trespassed, transgressed, sinned, was to take for obtain ing peace and reconciliation. A whole scheme of ser vices, ordinances, institutes, is arranged and appointed under the most awful sanctions, by the Divine King — • for what end ? That He may re-establish an inter course between Him and His subjects which has been interrupted; that He may bring back those whose hearts tell them they have wandered.
(3.) Again, it is not an insignificant point that the tabernacle is represented as the tabernacle of the con gregation. There, where God dwells, is the proper home of the whole people ; there they may feel that they are a whole people ; there they may If now that they are one, because He who has called them into covenant with Him is One. The more the sense of this unity was realised, the more easy and intelligible would be the words which follow.
(4.) ' Say to the children of Israel, If any of you bring * an offering unto the Lord.' It is not said, ' You shall ' bring this offering;' it is said, ' If you. do, then so and •* so it must be brought/ The desire for such sacrifice is presumed. Might it not safely be presumed ? Did not the condition and history of every people show that it existed ; that it could only be stifled when the
72 THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. [SEMI.
strongest and deepest convictions of humanity were stifled ? Wherever there was in men no sense of thank fulness, of obligation, of dependence, — wherever men were entirely wrapped up in themselves, satisfied with themselves, — wherever they had no sense of the past being connected with the present, and the future with both, — there was no movement towards sacrifice, no effort to make sacrifice. Whoever cherished these feelings amidst the strangest perversions and contra dictions, felt sacrifice to be a necessary and cardinal con dition of their lives, though it might be turned to the destruction of the impulses which had prompted it. Everything in the position of the Jew was awakening in him the sense of gratitude, of obligation, of dependence. He had been redeemed ; he was bound to the righteous Lord who had set him free ; he had no hope of life and freedom but from Him. Moreover, he was one of the children of Israel ; he had obligations to his fathers, to his children ; he could not separate himself from his country. He was apprised of relationships which he could shake off; of laws which must execute them selves whether he obeyed them or not — which he was created to obey. In such a man the sense of transgres sion, of disobedience, is awakened more than in anyone else. His whole education serves to bring it forth in him. Everything tells him what has been done for him, what goodness and mercy are compassing him round ; everything witnesses to him that there is a want of sympathy with them in him : everything tells
v.] THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. 73
him of an order that is fixed and that is blessed, and that there has been disorder in him. How certain was it that he would seek for some way of ridding himself of his burden, and that he would be ready to ask every person and thing to tell him what that way was. All the nations around would be saying to him, ' Our way ' of shaking off these troublesome thoughts and recollec- ' tions, is to offer sacrifice. We go to the priest or wise 1 man ; he tells us what God we have grieved, how we ' are to make amends to him. We do what he bids us ; ' we take it for granted that he has told us the right ' thing; we can then go comfortably to our business or ' our pleasure, and hope that all is right or will be right ' in due time. Of course there are some offences which ' require a greater compensation than others. Rich men ' are better off than the poor : when they have committed ' any huge crime, they can slaughter a whole herd by ' way of satisfaction, or bring some still more precious ' gift. We must do as well as we can. One animal will ' perhaps be reckoned enough in our case, both because ' more are not to be had, and because poverty may have ' had some share in making us go wrong.'
(5.) In many countries this would be the popular language. It would not be exactly so in Egypt ; there the animal ivorship would in some degree interfere with the animal sacrifice. The ox might rather receive the offering, than be made the victim. The command to the Jew is not that he should offer any peculiar novel sacrifice. He is to take of the herd and the flocJi, the
74 THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. [SERM.
same kind of offering which Noah or Abraham would have presented ; he is not to fear to take it, lest he should be extinguishing any divine life. The lesson is a double one. The common, things, the most ordinary part of his possessions, are those which he is to bring ; that is one part of his teaching : the animals are subjects of man ; he is to rule them and make use of them for his own higher objects; that is another.
(6.) He, however, is to understand that the service he is engaged in, is a serious one. He may easily be tempted to regard it as a formality which he is to go through ; but which is to be despatched with as little cost to himself, either of outward goods or of thought, as he can spend upon it. He must be reminded that sacrifice upon these terms is a lie. The demand that the victim from the herd shall be a male 'without blemish is a silent admonition to him of this truth if it leads him to reflect and question, himself why such a rule should be laid down for him, one part of the object is accomplished ; the ceremony is no longer a mere ceremony ; the spirit of a man is occupied with it ; the offering of the animal, he begins to perceive, is not the chief part of the sacrifice.
(7.) And to assist this conviction there comes in, the clause which sounds so strange in an accurate and formal edict, that he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord. ' After all, then, it is matter of choice ' whether he will perform or neglect this service ? '
T.] THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. 75
Certainly : if there is no sense in him of evil done, or •evil to be removed ; if lie lias committed no trespass ; if he has incurred no defilement ; if he has no need of reconciliation; — he is not under any compulsion to approach the tabernacle. If he is a true Israelite, — if he has taken any measure of that which is implied in this name, — if he knows what it is to be a devoted, dedicated being to God, what it is to be one of a congregation, he is certain to feel that he has departed again and again from his right condition. But, as it is needful to assert that all sacrifice pro ceeds from the will of God, it is equally needful to affirm that the sacrifice is accomplished only by the consent of the will of man ; that without that consent it is absolutely without meaning.
(8.) Although, however, there is this vindication of choice in the act of bringing the gift, there is no choice whatever as to the place at which it is to be presented. The words are strict and imperative : ' He shall offer it * at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.' ' It ' is a private calamity he wishes to avert; why not offer ' private sacrifice ? It is a sin of his own he wishes to 'be free from; why come forth to make this public ' acknowledgment of it ? ' Such questions, according to the heathen views of sacrifice, were unanswerable ; the whole faith of the Jew perished if he listened to them. Out of those notions of private sacrifice, grew everything which was superstitious, idolatrous, •destructive of a commonwealth. It was not the bond
76 THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. [SERM.
to a common Lord that had been broken; it was an offence that had been committed against some special power, — some avenging deity, of earth or air. It was not the bond to the fellow-citizen that had been broken ; the individual could set himself right, without any reference to father, wife, children, neighbours. An altogether confused notion of the nature of evilr a disbelief in the privileges which belonged to the Israelites as a body, a denial that they were a people called and redeemed by the one living God, a growing doubt, therefore, whether there was such a Being — these were the consequences of taking the ox or the sheep to some other place than that in which the Lord God had put His Name.
(9.) The victim was taken to the door of the place, at which all Israelites had an equal right to appear ; but the man who brought it laid his own hand upon the head of it. He signified that the act was his; that it expressed thoughts in his mind which no one else could know of. The crime he had done, or the disease that was preying upon him, or the bitterness of spirit which he could not tell to another, might all be declared to the searcher of hearts : if he could not utter them the act uttered them. He comes in his ignorance, believing there is One who knows him, and has bidden him come. That which is passing in him cannot be weighed or measured. He cannot reduce it under the head of bodily grief, or mental grief, or stings of conscience ; he cannot say how much of pleasure and
v.] THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. 77
joy are mixed with the suffering, or whether it is good or bad, animal or spiritual. What did he understand of these refinements ? What could they have profited him if he had understood them ? He sought to have that explained to him which was utterly confused ; to have himself set right. There was war in him ; he needed peace. Someone was displeased with him; he desired to be reconciled.
(10.) And the words are as precise and strong as can be. ' It shall be accepted for him to malce atone- * mentfor him.' The reconciliation which he seeks he shall find. God will meet him there. God, who knows what he is, — what he is suffering, — what he has done, — who has appointed the conditions of his existence, — who sees exactly how he has used them or abused them, — to whom the past and present of his life are both open — who has been making him aware of that in which he has been wrong, — of that in which he is weak and is likely to be wrong, — the God from whom he is conscious of estrangement, with whom he is sure that he ought to be at one, — He takes away that which separates them. He accepts this sign of his submission, He restores him to his rights in the divine society.
(11.) And now first it is that we hear of the priests, Aaron's sons. They have not suggested what the offer ing shall be, or what is likely to be the best way of making it acceptable. All this is taken out of their hands ; they are not even the persons through whom the communication of the divine will is made to the
78 THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. [SERM.
Israelites ; they are the servants of a law, as much as the meanest of the people, — a law which they are to execute, which they must not, at their peril, depart from, to carry out any sublime notions of theirs, to meet any notions which may arise in the mind of any offender. The gift, the place, the atonement, are all spoken of before there is any allusion to them. But when they are introduced, we perceive at once that their office is a most important one; that the idea of the commonwealth and of the sacrifice would be imper fect, nay, self-contradictory, without them. If there was a congregation — if the individual Israelites were not to have their separate sacrifices and their separate gods — then there must be a representative of this unity; there must be one who acted as if they were a body. If the congregation derived its unity from its relation to the invisible Lord who had called out the family and the nation to be His witnesses to the world, then the man who expressed its unity must express its relation to this Lord. There could not be a fear of his ever glorifying himself on either of these positions, while he remembered the other, and while he remembered that they were inseparable. The abstracted Brahmin, stand ing aloof from the people, may believe that he is absorbed into his God — that he becomes identical with him. The minister of the congregation, the priest who was bound by his calling to feel himself one with them in all their sins and infirmities, had a perpetual witness in himself that he was no God, and that he could not
v.j THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. 70
approach to God whilst he supposed himself in any
degree divided from God's people. On the other hand, I the priest may sink into one of the congregation, using r any higher lore he has received only to gratify their
tastes and fancies, or to gratify his own avarice and ; ambition at their expense ; the vilest pander to all their
most violent passions ; interested in keeping them base ; and ignorant, lest they should see into his hypocrisy
and loathe him as he deserves to be loathed. But so s Ions: as he remembers that ' holiness to the Lord ' is
o
inscribed oil his forehead — that he is consecrated as a witness to the people of the actual relation which exists
, between them and the God of truth and righteousness — and of his will to put away their falsehood and evil, that they may be like Him — this horrible fall becomes
I as impossible as the other. So that, while the history tells us in plain terms that the Jewish priests were often ,not better than heathen priests, and when not better
I were very much worse, it testifies as clearly that their 'arrogance, and craft, and sottishness came from a disbe lief and forgetfulness of their divine and human calling,
> — not from exaggerating its worth and sacredness.
(12.) And I believe there were lessons taught the ipriests in this very passage, as well as in other passages
jof this book, which would recur to them again and iagain, and smite their consciences, while they went on Jin an evil course, till their consciences became actually
;Jseared, and they and the nation they represented fell together. One of these lessons lay in their hereditary
•SO THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. [SERM.
succession. The limitation of this office to a family signified that the priests were not chosen for their individual gifts or virtues, though these would be bestowed upon them freely if they remembered their calling. They took nothing by mere descent from their ancestors ; they declared to each new age that the same God who had spoken to their fathers and ruled them, and held intercourse with them, and blotted out their sins, was speaking to them, ruling them, holding inter course with them, blotting out their sins. And lest any .: family conceit should spi-ing up, as of course it would, out of a vocation which, rightly apprehended, was so subversive of it, they were reminded continually by in terruptions in the succession, by the atrocities of priests and the tremendous judgments which followed, how the instrument might be dashed in pieces, that the truth for which he existed to testify might be established.
(13.) The special office of the priest, as it is set forth in this passage, was also, I think, very significant to him of the end for which he was appointed. He ivas ] to 1} ring Hi e blood, and to sprinkle the blood round about the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. The blood, the Israelites had been told already, was the life, which they were not to eat, but to pour out lilce water. It had been said that -whoso slieddetli man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, because in the image of God was man made, and because of every man's brother ivould he require the life of man. This blood, this life, was evidently the most sacred part
v.] THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. 81
of the service ; it is referred to in every part of the institution of sacrifice ; it is connected with purifica tion. Yet it was not mixed with the rest of the offer ing ; it was poured out about the altar, while the mere animal, the dead thing, was offered as a whole burnt sacrifice. I apprehend that there were lessons here never to be forgotten, concerning death and life ; concerning the preciousness and dignity of life; concerning the dedi cation of that to God; concerning the special duty of the priest to be a witness that the living sacrifice is that which God seeks for, that it is this which interprets the mystery of death, that it is this which purifies, that it is this which unites. The hint was given; the priest was to think over it, to dwell upon it, to consider what principles, yet to be brought out and realised, were latent in it. When he tried to do the work which was ! given him to do — when he entered with most simplicity 1 into all that was weakest, and all that was saddest in those for whom he ministered — when he sought the , interpretation of one and the other from God Him- , self, these lessons became clear to him. Then he was taught to pour out his own life blood, and not only that ' of the beasts, before the altar ; then he was taught that there must be a higher and nobler blood than that, poured out for the whole congregation and for the human race, to purify it of its selfish corruptions, to unite it with God.
Even in the perplexities of the Levitical law, such a priest may have found subjects for reflection and medi-
82 THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. [SERM.
tation, wliicli may have been, in the end, more profitable and instructive to him than rules which he could at once have understood. It has seemed to many, that the division of offerings into trespass-off erings, sin-offerings, thank-offerings, peace-offerings, is what logicians call a cross division ; for must not the trespass-offering be also a sin-offering, a peace-offering, or a thank-offering? The classification, though it may offend the intellect, justifies itself to the heart. The desire to express thankfulness may be mixed inseparably with the desire to confess an outward trespass, or a secret sin. But one of these desires is always predominant over the other, and this predominance determines what a man is likely to seek for in a sacrifice if he is left to his own fancies. The divine Legislator meets him with these distinct names ; they are what he needs ; a more formal and seemingly accurate classification would defeat its own objects. The priest who took these hints as his guides and landmarks, would arrive at a deeper know ledge of himself and of his fellow-men. He would be preserved from the great temptation into which priests in all ages have fallen, of inventing a multitude of rules for cases of conscience, which produce the evil they profess to guard against, which corrupt and enslave the conscience they pretend to purify and relieve.
The mixture of services for what, in the dialect of divines, are called ceremonial impurities, that is to say, such as have no inherent moral evil in them, with actual trespasses, has been another complaint against these
v.] THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. 83
Levitical precepts. Here, too, I think, we are forgetting facts in our eagerness to make distinctions, and thus lose the real and radical distinctions which we should discern if we were less impatient. Bodily diseases do affect the mind in a thousand ways — affect it with fears of the future, with remembrances of the past, with a sense of wrong. They look like punishments; it is very little help merely to tell anyone who is suffering from them, that they are disguised mercies. If you are to make him feel that truth, you must show him that the Lord of all cares for all the evils that afflict him ; for every kind of torment to which he is actually sub ject, whatever name psychologists or physiologists may please to bestow upon it. You must not leave him to find out, by subtle self-questioning, whether there is moral evil in what he has done or thought, or how much ; if you do, he will involve himself in endless entanglements, from which no maxims or formulas will set him free. Treat him as such a being as he is ; show that all his experience has been foreseen, and that it is not a solitary one ; let him come and cast himself before the Lord, and seek the atonement He has pro mised ; so you give him real help, so you make him a wiser as well as a more simple and true man. That this is done ; that the difficulties which belong to human beings, and which would lead them to seek all evil helps, are turned to the account of good ; that the rules come in where they are wanted, and do not attempt what they cannot perform ; that they suggest what they are
G 2
84 THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. [SEEM. r.
unable to teach, and so leave the minds of those who are disciplined by them to expand under higher and freer influences ; this is, I conceive, the test of that legislation which is at once human and divine.
The great annual atonement, which is appointed in the sixteenth chapter of this book, carries us a step beyond those daily sacrifices, of which the opening pas sages speak, though the two parts of the scheme are strikingly in harmony. The general like the individual offerings is grounded wholly upon the will of God ; like them, it assumes the nation to be already a holy and sacrificed nation, in spite of the sins of its particular members, and of its own public sins; like them, it starts from the assumption that God is seeking to reconcile those who have wandered, to Himself ; like them, it as sumes the will of the creature to be the great subject of the reconciliation ; like them, it treats the priest as at once representing the holiness of the nation, and as sharing its sins. But with the dead animal is connected a living one, which goes away into the wilderness bearing the sins of the land. The bullock that was slain, the scapegoat that disappeared, suggested to the Israelite these two thoughts. God can entirely take away the evil of a people and of a man. If He takes it away, the Mediator, the sin-bearer, must in some unspeakable manner unite Death and Life.
SERMON VI.
DAVID'S SACRIFICE. (Lincoln? s Inn, 2nd Sunday after Easter, April 30, 1854.)
For thou desirest not sacrifice ; else would I give it : thou delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, 0 God, thou wilt not despise.' — PSALM li. 16, 17.
WHEN I spoke to you last on the subject of Sacrifice, I was considering the provisions of the Levitical Law. I endeavoured to show you how strikingly those pro visions, formal and precise as they were, illustrated the principle of Sacrifice, as we had seen it unfolding itself in the offerings of Abel, of Noah, of Abraham. The national precept carried on the education of the Jew when he was come into new circumstances, but it did not alter or modify any of the lessons which he had learnt among the tents of the Patriarchs. It protected those lessons from perils by which they were threatened; it connected them with the experience which the Is raelites had passed through in Egypt; it prepared the way for fresh experiences through which they would pass
86 DAVID'S SACKIFICE. [SEEM.
in Palestine. The more closely we examine the terms of the command which appointed ivliat sacrifices should be offered, — how, and where, and by whom, — construing those terms strictly as laws should be construed, the more we perceive how they were directed against the Heathen notions of sacrifice, which spring up so natu rally in the heart of man — which foster its pride, and which bring it into slavery — and which had already worked so mightily and fearfully in the world : the more we saw how these provisions asserted the divine doctrine that Sacrifice must proceed from the Will of God, and is perfected when the will of man is subdued to it.
But clearly as I think these positions are established by the plain words of Scripture — still more by all the context of its history, by the errors of the chosen people, and by the effects which ensued when they fell into the habits of the people round about them — I do not wonder that readers have felt something like a shock when they have passed directly from the Law to the Psalms; when they find Kings and Seers apparently disparaging those offerings, which were so precious a part of the divine economy. Our attention has been lately called to passages of this kind — passages which have