EXPEEIEXCE, Hume's argument from. See Hume; Mir.vcle.
Experience Meetings are assemblies of relig- ious jiersons, wlio meet for the ])urpose of relating their exi)erience to each other. They are sometimes called covenant and conference meetings, and, in the Metliodist Church, cln!<s-7neeli7iffs (q. v.). " It has been doubted by some whetlier these meetings are of any great utility, and whether they do not, in some meas- ure, force people to say more than is true, and piifFup those with pride who are able to communicate their ideas with facility; liut to this it has lieen answered, 1. That the abuse of a thing is no proof of the evil of it. 2. That the most eminent saints of old did not neg- lect this practice (Psa. Ivi, IG; Mai. iii, 10). 3. That liy a wise and prudent relation of experience the Clu'is- tian is led to see that others liave participated of the same joys and sorrows with liimself ; he is excited to love and serve God ; and animated to persevei'ance iu
duty bj' finding tliat others, of like passions with him* self, are zealous, active, and diligent. 4. That the Scriptures seem to enjoin the frequent intercourse of Christians for the puri>ose of strengthening each other in religious services (Heb. x, 24, 2.j ; Col. iii, IG ; Matt, xviii, 20)" (Buck, TheoL Diciio7iart/, s. v.). See Cl.vss-
MEETIXGS.
Expiation, Jewish Day of Annual (Lev, xvi, 1-34; comp. xxiii,SG, 39; Numb, xxix, 7-11), a sol- emn fast (Acts xxvii, 9 ; Philo, O]^}}- ii, 20G, 29G, 591 ; Josephus, Ant. xiv, 10, 4) and holy day ("'.rSw' r2*3, Lev. xvi, 31 ; xxiii, 32), held from the evening of the 9th till that of the 10th day of the 5tli month, Tisri, five days before the feast of Tabernacles. Tlie mod- ern Mohammedan fast called "Eamadan," held during an entire (lunar) month, has sometimes been referred to as having its analogies ; likewise the fast of Isis among the ancient Egyptians (Herod, iv, 186; comp, ii, 40), and the Hindu fast-day " Sandrajonon," etc. See Fast.
EXPIATION, "a religious act, by which satisfac- tion or atonement is made for the commission of some crime, the guilt done away, and the obligation to pun- ishment cancelled. The chief methods of expiation among the Jews were by sacrifices ; and it is impor- tant always to recollect that the Levitical sacrifices were of an expiatory character ; because as among the Jews sacrifices were unquestionably of divine original, and as the terms taken fiom them are found applied so frequently to Christ and to his sufferings in the New Testament, they serve to ex])l;un that peculiaritj' under which the apostles regarded the death of Christ, and afibrd additional proof that it was considered by them as a sacrifice of expiation, as the grand universal sin-ofltering for the whole world. For our Lord is an^ nounced by John as ' the Lamb of God ;' and that not with reference to meekness or any other moral virtue, but with an acconipanj^ing phrase, which would com- municate to a Jew the full sacrificial sense of the term employed, 'the Lamb of God, which talceth away the sin of the world.' He is called 'our Passover, sac- rificed for us.' He is said to have given 'himself An- us, an oflfcring and a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smell- ing savor.' As a priest, it was necessar\- ' he sliould have somewhat to oflTer ;' and he offered ' himself,' ' his own blood,' to which is ascribed the washing away of sin, and our eternal redemption. He is declared to have ' put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,' to have 'by himself purged our sins,' to have 'sanctified the people by his own blood,' to have.' offered to God one sacrifice for sins.' Add to these, and to innumerable other similar expressions and allusions, the argument of the apostle in the Epistle to tlie Ileljrews.in which, by proving at length that the sacrifice of Clirist was superior in efficacy to the sacrifices of tlie law, he most unequivocally assumes that the death of Christ was a sacrifice and sin-offering; for without that it would no more have been capable of comparison with tlie sacri- fices of the law, than the deatli of John the Baptist, St, Stephen, or St. James, all martyrs and sufferers for the truth, who had recently sealed their testimony with their blood. This very comparison, we may af- firm, is utterly unaccountable and absurd on any h}'- ]iothesis which denies the sacrifice of Christ; for what relation could his death have to the Levitical immola- tions and offerings if it had no sacrificial character.' Nothing could, in fact, lie more misleading, and even absurd, tli.in to apjily tliose terms which, both among Jews and Gentiles, were in use to express the various processes and means of atonement and piacular propi- tiation, if the apostles and Christ himself did not in- tend to represent his death strictly as an expiation for sin — misleading, because such would be the natural and necessary inference from the terms themselves, wliich had acquired this as their established meaning; and absurd, because if, as Socinians say, they used them
EXPIATIOi^T
421
EXPIATION
metaphorically, there was not even an ideal resem- blance between the figure and that which it was in- tended to illustrate. So totally irrelevant, indeed, will those terms appear to any notion entertained of the death of Christ which excludes its expiatory charac- ter, that to assume that our Lord and his apostles used them as metaphors is profanely to assume them to be such writers as would not in any other case be toler- ated ; writers wholly unacquainted wtih the common- est rules of language, and therefore wholly unfit to be teachers of others, and that not only in religion, but in things of inferior importance.