needs agree with Bahr in making them mere symbolical expressions of the subjective state of the offerer, who presented his victim in place of himself as an expression of ‘his sense of gratitude, of obligation, of dependence.” He admits that the inspired apostle applied the Greek words ‘Kar os and (Aacrnptoy to Christ, as sacrificed for us, in the sense which those words had always borne in classical Greek. Yet he says that in its Christian use its uniform “heathen sense must be, not modified, but inerted.’+ That is, Paul chose a word which always had meant, and which could only signify to his readers, the very opposite of what he intended to say. An admirable canon of interpretation, to be applied when- ever the apostle says the opposite of what Maurice is willing to believe !
Bushnell is essentially in agreement with Maurice and Bahr. With him the Jewish sacrifices were the liturgy of the Jewish religion, a transactional liturgy, expressing the confession of guilt and repentance by the worshipper before God as a reconciling God. He holds that the only effect of the sacrifices was lustral: “ Here, then, is the grand terminal of all sacrifice; taken as a liturgy, it issues in making clean; purges, washes, sprinkles, purifies, sanctifies, carries away pollution; in that sense absolves the guilty.’’}
Dr. John Young of Edinburgh holds precisely the same view of the Mosaic sacrifices: “When a Jew
* Epistles of Paul, pp. 477-481. T Doctrine of Sacrifice, pp. 72, 154. t Vicarious Sacrifice, pp. 168, 169.
SACRIFICES PIACULAR AND TYPICAL. 121
brought his sacrifice to the altar, two distinct ideas were cmaprex presented to his mind. On the one hand, here was a yaa merciful divine provision for his animal life; on the
other hand, the God who had made this provision was
here laying claim to the reverence and love of his heart,
and demanding his willing return and _ self-surrender. Every fresh offering was meant to be a new return and self-surrender to his God.”*
This theory has been fully sifted and refuted by Kurtz and Fairbairn. . Its only ground is a moral (so- called) sentiment which refuses to accept the doctrine of expiation so plainly read by the whole Church in the . words of Scripture. It is utterly without support, either in the natural sense of the Pentateuch, in the New Tes- tament application of the law to the gospel, or in the opinions of ancient Jews or Christians, who lived when sacrifices were in habitual use. ;
The bleeding sacrifices under the Mosaic law were of rhe ait. three kinds: the sin and trespass offering, the burnt- °?"., offering, and the peace-offering. The presentation, the sacrifice imposition of hands and confession of sins, and the slaughtering, were the same in all, “ But in the remain- ing functions, the sprinkling of the blood, the burning, and the sacrificial meal, we find characteristic differences, inasmuch as each one of these three stands out by itself as a peculiarly emphasized and prominent feature in one of the three kinds of sacrifice. The sprinkling of the blood was the culminating point in the sin-offering. In the others, it evidently fell into the background, the ' blood being merely poured around upon the altar; but in the sin-offerings the horns of the altar of burnt-offer- ing, in which the whole worth of the altar culminated, were appointed as the object upon which the blood was to be sprinkled. In some cases even this appeared in-
* Life and Light of Men, pp. 226, 280.
CHAPTER VII.
The or- thodox doctrine proved.
122 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
sufficient, and the blood was taken into the Holy Place, where it was sprinkled upon the horns of the altar of incense, towards the curtain before the Capporeth, and sometimes even upon the Capporeth itself, in the Most Holy Place. In the burnt-offering, nby, an ascension, or going wp, and ‘3, the whole, on the other hand, the act of burning was the culminating point. Lastly, the sacrificial meal was the main point and real character- istic of the peace-offering.” * From this we obtain a by no means unimportant insight into the nature and dis- tinguishing characteristic of the sacrifices. There was
-confession of sin and the infliction of death, the vicarious
penalty, in all alike; but in the case of the sin and trespass offering, expiation of some special sin, the re- moval of some special penalty involving exclusion from — the covenant of grace, is the great thing intended. In
the case of the burnt-offering, atonement was made for