1 D. Smith, The Feast of the Covenant, 52.
ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 429
you write on a slate and rub it out, some marks are often left. The ancients used a wax tablet. Take one of our common slates and fill it with wax even with the frame, and you will have an ancient wax tablet. A sharp-pointed instrument made the marks in the wax, and when they wished to blot it out, they turned the flat end of the stylus and rubbed it over, and there was an absolute erasure of every mark that had been made. That is the figure, then, used by Peter for the forgiveness of sins — indi- cating that when God forgives sins, they are not only thrown away, as in the expression remission, but they are blotted out — the last trace of them being gone, and gone for ever.
From morn to eve they struggled — Life and Death, At first it seemed to me that they in mirth Contended, and as foes of equal worth,
So firm their feet, so undisturbed their breath.
But when the sharp red sun cut through its sheath Of western clouds, I saw the brown arm's girth Tighten and bear that radiant form to earth,
And suddenly both fell upon the heath.
And then the wonder came ; for when I fled To where those great antagonists down fell, I could not find the body that I sought, And when and where it went I could not tell ; One only form was left of those who fought,
The long dark form of Death — and it was dead.1
2. But, it may be asked, how does our Lord's life of " obedience even unto death " avail for us ? It was His own life, and how is it linked on to our lives ? What is the nexus between it and them ? View it as the sacrifice which ratified the New Covenant. It is the covenant that links our lives to His. Eem ember what the sacrifice at Mount Sinai signified. The victim was presented in the name of the people ; and the offering of its life at the altar was symbolic of the surrender of their lives to God. And even so Jesus is our Bepresentative. He is the second Head of humanity, and as, by the operation of those mysterious laws which link the generations, the entail of Adam's sin is the heritage of his children, so in like manner the righteousness of Jesus touches
1 Cosmo Monkhouse.
430 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT
us too. Ho lived His life and died His death in our name and on our behalf ; and, that we may enter into the covenant and appro- priate its benefits, we have only to acknowledge Him as our Kepresentative and say Amen to all that He did and all that He was. We have only to approach the throne of mercy in our sin- fulness and weakness and point to that holy life laid, in perfect devotion to the Father's will, on the altar of Calvary, making it our offering and presenting it before God as the life which we fain would live and by His grace shall live. And thus we lay our sins on Jesus, the spotless lamb of God, and, making His sacrifice our formula at once of confession and of consecration, win by it acceptance and peace.
In all nations beyond the limits of Israel, the sacrifices of living victims spoke not only of surrender and dependence, but likewise of the consciousness of demerit and evil on the part of the offerers, and were at once a confession of sin, a prayer for pardon, and a propitiation of an offended God. And the sacri- fices in Israel were intended and adapted not only to meet the deep-felt want of human nature, common to them as to all other tribes, but also were intended and adapted to point onwards to Him in whose death a real want of mankind was met, in whose death a real sacrifice was offered, in whose death an angry God was not indeed propitiated, but in whose death the loving Father of our souls Himself provided the Lamb for the offering, without which, for reasons deeper than we can wholly fathom, it was impossible that sin should be remitted.
Tf Let me mention here a circumstance in the last days of the distinguished Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, who, at an extreme age, but in full possession of all his rare mental powers, was brought to the knowledge of the Saviour. He said, " I never used to be able to understand what these good people meant when they spoke so much of the blood, the blood. But I understand it now ; it's just Substitution ! " Ay, that is it, in one word, Substitution — "my blood shed for many for the remission of sins," — Christ's blood instead of ours, — Christ's death for our eternal death, — Christ " made a curse, that we might be redeemed from the curse of the law." Once in conversation, my beloved friend, Dr. Duncan, expressed it thus in his terse way, " A religion of blood is God's appointed religion for a sinner, for the wages of sin is death." x
1 0. J. Brown, The Word of Lift, 94.