“= Testament into the language of the Old.”* We point them to the fact that sacrifices, undeniably vicarious and piacular, have prevailed everywhere among all nations from before the dawn of history down, at least, to the Christian era. They respond by admitting the fact alleged to its utmost extent, but maintain that it is the result and expression of crude civilization and gross superstition. Michaélis attributes the universal prevalence of piacular sacrifices to a sensus communis, having its ground in human nature. Thomson argues the same principle at length in the second of his Bampton Lec- tures. Bishop Butler says: ‘“ By the general prevalence of propitiatory sacrifices over the heathen world, this notion of repentance alone being sufficient to expiate guilt appears to be contrary to the general sense of | mankind.” + This reduces the question to a direct issue between the cultivated moral consciousness of a few “advanced thinkers,” self-styled, of the nineteenth cen- tury, on the one hand, and on the other, the natural moral instincts of all races and nations. This issue is made not by us, but by the “advanced thinkers” them- selves. It appears to be a reductio ad absurdum, and a finished specimen of its kind.
Jewish II. That the sacrifices instituted by God, under the
vacua, Mosaic economy, were vicarious and expiatory is suscep- tible of abundant proof. The death of the bleeding’ sacrifice was a pena vicarid, a vicarious punishment,
ictim- being substituted-in the stead of
the life of the offerer.
This view is is the traditional and orthodox view of both the
aa at Jewish and the Christian Churches, held in common by
Chetan Hl writers of authority, from the Rabbins and the early _
Christian Churches. Fathers down to very recent times. Even among modern
* Epistles of Paul, vol. i1., p. 470. fT Analogy, part ii., chap. v.
| SACRIFICES PIACULAR AND TYPICAL. tig
German writers it is supported by many Rationalists, such as Gesenius, De Wette, Bruno Bauer, &c., who have no interest in any relation the Jewish sacrifices may have to the Christian atonement, as well as ortho- dox expositors of the first eminence for learning and genius, as Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Lange, Ebrard, Tho- masius, Kahnis and Kurtz. As I shall show below, this view is plainly taught by the inspired record of the institution, observance, and history of the Mosaic sacri- fices, and also by the entire mass of whatsoever tradi- tions related to the subject remain in the world.
The old Socinian view of sacrifice taught in the last century by the Latitudinarian Sykes and the Unitarian John Taylor of Norwich, has in this generation been re- vived and advocated with great ability by Bahr, and through him disseminated among classes of men not confessedly Socinian, yet unwilling to accept the heredi- tary faith of the Church. His opinion was, that the death of the victim, instead of being a vicarious punish- ment, was no essential part of the transaction, but merely incidental as a means of affording the blood. The essence of the whole sacrificial service, according to Bahr, was the sprinkling of the blood, as the bearer of the life, upon God’s altar, thus symbolizing the giving away of the offerer’s life to God; ‘in other words, his returning back again to God, by repentance and faith and self- dedication, after being separated from him by sin.”
Jowett appears to give up the Jewish sacrifices, as being as entirely unjustifiable as those of the heathen. He says, ‘‘ Heathen and Jewish sacrifices rather show us what the death of Christ was not than what it was. They are the dim, vague, rude, almost barbarous ex- pression of that want in human nature which has re- ceived satisfaction in him only.” ‘The death of Christ is not a sacrifice in the Levitical sense.” ‘‘ Not the sacri-
CHAPTER VIII.
Opinion of Bahr.
Opinion of Jowett.
CHAPTER Vill.
Opinion of Mau- rice.
Opinion of Bush- nell,
Opinion of Young.
120 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
fice, nor the satisfaction, nor the ransom, but the greatest moral act ever done in the world—the act, too, of one in our likeness—is the assurance to us that God in Christ is reconciled to the world.’’*
Maurice, not being sufficiently advanced to reject with
Jowett the Old Testament sacrifices as barbarous, must