^ Without uncharitableness, it may be said that much of our scepticism and unbelief is simply the scepticism of neglected souls and the unbelief of world-worn hearts. It is often remarked that, in our distracted and overcrowded life, it requires much efifort to keep our friendships with one another. But think you it requires less effort to keep up our sense of intimacy with God, to know Him with that knowledge which is Eternal Life, to gain insight into His ways, to love Him, and to enjoy what the Benediction calls " the communion of the Holy Spirit " ? Many of us, alas ! do not take time to believe in God. By our unresting action in earthly affairs, by our neglect of meditation and prayer, we build up around ourselves the very conditions of unbelief, and thus the sense of God fades out of our hearts, and all vital recognition of God disappears from our lives. We cease to tend and feed the altar-fires, and in some hour of critical trial we wake up to the fact that the very capacity for receiving religious inspiration and religious comfort has almost perished, and we are ready to take up the moan of the dying Paracelsus in Bobert Browning's poem —
Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity;
These are its sign and note and character,
And these I have lost! gone, shut from me for ever.
* John Hunter,
The Scapegoat.
35»
Literature.
Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Miuion Serinons, iii. 267.
Driver (S. R.), in the Dictionary of the Bible, i. 207.
Edcrsheim (A.), The Temple, 302.
Frazer (J. G.), The Golden Bough, iii 93.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, 264.
Nestle (Eb.), in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. 282.
Schechter (S.), Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 301.
Selby (T. G.), The God of the Patriarchs, 221.
Thomas (JS. W.), in Folk-Ion, xriL 26a
The Scapegoat.
The goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land.— Lev. zvi. 22.
The Day of Atonement.
This is part of the ritual of the Day of Atonement. Now the Day of Atonement represents the culminating institution of the Levitical system. Not only, from a merely formal point of view, does Lev. xvi. form the climax of the sacrificial and purificatory ordinances contained in Lev. i-xv., but the ceremonial itself is of a peculiarly comprehensive and representative character. It was a yearly atonement for the nation as a whole (including the priests) ; and not only for the nation, but also for the sanctuary, in its various parts, in so far as this had been defiled during the past year by the sins of the people in whose midst it stood.
^ In Kabbinical literature the Day of Atonement becomes practically the great Day of Eepentance, the culmination of the Ten Days of Eepentance. It brings with itself purification, the Father in Heaven making white the sin committed by the son, by His forgiveness and pardon. " It is the Day of the Lord, great and very terrible," inasmuch as it becomes a day of judgment, but also the Day of Salvation. " Israel is steeped in sin through the Uvil Yezer in their body, but they do repentance and the Lord forgives their sins every year, and renews their heart to fear Him." " On the Day of Atonement I will create you a new creation." It is thus a penitential day in the full and in the best sense of the word.*
^ The Talmudical treatise on the ritual of the Day of Atonement is entitled Yoma, "the d&j" which sufficiently expresses its importance in the series of sacrificial observances. It was the confession of the incompleteness of them all, a cere- monial proclamation that ceremonies do not avail to take away
' S. Schechter. GEN.-NUM. — 23
354 THE SCAPEGOAT
sin ; and it was also a declaration that the true end of worship is not reached till the worshipper has free access to the holy place of the Most High. Thus the prophetic element is the very life- breath of this supreme institution of the old covenant, which therein acknowledges its own defects, and feeds the hopes of a future better thing.^
H
Thb Two Goats.
1. On this day the CongregatioA of Israel brought two goats for the purpose of atonement. For these, lots were cast at the door of the sanctuary, " one lot for Jehovah, and the other lot for Azazel." The one on which the lot of Jehovah fell was then slain as a sin-offering. The other was brought before God "to make atonement over it, to send it away for Azazel into the wilderness." Then, after the sins of the congregation had been confessed, this animal was made the bearer of all the sins of the now reconciled Israel, and was led away into the wilderness and there let loose " in a solitary land."
^ Most solemn as the services had hitherto been, the worshippers would chiefly think with awe of the high-priest going into the immediate presence of God, coming out thence alive, and securing for them by the blood the continuance of the Old Testament privileges of sacrifices and of access unto God through them. What now took place concerned them, if possible, even more nearly. Their own personal guilt and sins were now to be removed from them, and that in a symboUcal rite, at one and the same time the most mysterious and the most significant of all. All this while the " scapegoat," with the " scarlet-tongue," telling of the guilt it was to bear, had stood looking eastwards, confronting the people, and waiting for the terrible load which it was to carry away " unto a land not inhabited." Laying both his hands on the head of this goat, the high-priest now confessed and pleaded : " Ah, Jehovah ! they have committed iniquity ; they have transgressed ; they have sinned — Thy people, the house of Israel. Oh, then, Jehovah ! cover over (atone for), I intreat Thee, upon their iniquities, their transgressions, and their sins, which they have wickedly committed, transgressed, and sinned before Thee — Thy people, the house of Israel. As it is written in the law of Moses, Thy servant, saying : " For on that day shall it