» T. O. 8«lby.
LEVITICUS XVI. 22 359
transferred to a pair of victims, one of which was slain at the altar where its life was offered to an offended God, whilst the other was driven forth into the wilderness, carrying into inac- cessible places the burden placed upon it The principle needed fine definitions and careful safeguards in the after-ages, but it expressed a rough and enduring truth without which social and religious life are alike impossible. The vicarious principle is not ordained to compromise or destroy responsibility, but the denial of its presence and working, within divinely appointed limits, involves the denial of that providential order under which man- kind is placed.
^ But how is the modem world to be taught the vicarious principle when it has so little knowledge of the meaning of sin ? No doubt ignorance of the nature of sin is largely due to ignorance of the Bible. Holman Hunt tells us his experience of this double ignorance when he returned from Palestine with his great picture, " The Scapegoat."
Mr. Gambart, the picture-dealer, was ever shrewd and enter- taining. He came in his turn to my studio, and I led him to " The Scapegoat."
" What do you call that ? "
"'The Scapegoat.'"
" Yes ; but what is it doing ? "
" You will understand by the title, Le houc errarU."
" But why errant ? " he asked.
" Well, there is a book called the Bible, which gives an account of the animal You will remember."
" No," he replied ; " I never heard of it."
" Ah, I forgot, the book is not known in France, but English people read it more or less," I said, " and they would all under- stand the story of the beast being driven into the wilderness."
" You are mistaken. No one would know anything about it, and if I bought the picture it would be left on my hands. Now, we will see," replied the dealer. " My wife is an English lady ; there is a friend of hers, an English girl, in the carriage with her. We will ask them up ; you shall tell them the title ; we will see. Do not say more."
The ladies were conducted into the room.
" Oh, how pretty ! what is it ? " they asked.
« It is ' The Scapegoat,' " I said.
There was a pause. "Oh yes," they commented to one another, "it is a peculiar goat; you can see by the ears, they droop 80."
36o THE SCAPEGOAT
The dealer then, nodding with a smile towards me, said to them, " It is in the wilderness."
The ladies : " Is that the wilderness now ? Are you intend- ing to introduce any others of the flock ? " And so the dealer was proved to be right, and I had over-counted on the picture's intelligibility.^
4. This rite also provided a form of absolution which comforted the conscience-stricken Israelite, and gave fresh courage to his souL It addressed itself to the imagination, and accomplished this specific end in a more vivid and impressive way than the common sacrifices of the tabernacle. This action-parable, in which perhaps there was much of condescension to the super- stition of the age, helped men to feel that the load of guilt was gone, that clouds of gathering wrath had been dispersed, and that the sky from which God looked down was fair and smiling once more. In many places where similar rites were observed, the people crouched with fear in their houses, and some trace of this feature of the custom appears in the Book of Leviticus, which forbade the people entering into the tabernacle whilst the goat for sacrifice was being offered. When the rite had been ac- compHshed, men and women breathed freely once more, as though the world were no longer a place of penalty and a prison-house. The sense of fear was dispelled from the heart as the dim figure of the man leading the scapegoat disappeared over the tops of the hills, and no news of the year was received with greater gladness than the word signalled back to the city that the victim with its burden had passed into the waste wilderness. The rite was obviously adopted to keep alive the expectation of a time when evil should be cast forth into the desolate spaces of the Universe, and the last trace of sin and its curse should be taken away from the city and the people of God. The ceremony was surely a prophecy in symbol of the true Day of Atonement, when the Man of God's choice should carry the burdens of the race into the land of forgetfulness and gracious oblivion.
^ No sins are reckoned against us by God ; on His side they are all put away — in relation to Him they have no existence. Hence our Lord says (Matt. ix. 2) : " Son, be of good cheer, thy sins have been done away." " Son " — for He is speaking to him as to a child of God, and tells him, without any solicitation on his
* W. Holman Huat, Pre- Raphaelitism and the Pte-BaphMlite Brotherhood, ii. 107.
LEVITICUS XVI. 22 361
part, an eternal fact, viz. — that his sins have no existence as in the mind or eye of God. The same truth is expressed in the parable of the prodigal son — there is no reckoning of sin against the prodigal on the father's side.^