munication of the benefits of his passion in the forgive- ness of sins to those that believe in him, and in their reconciliation with God. Shall we, finalh', say that those sacrifices had respect, not to God, to olitain par- don by expiation, but to the offerer, teacliing him moral lessons, and calling forth moral dispositions ? We answer that this hypothesis leaves many of the essential circumstances of the ceremonial wholly un- accounted for. The tabernacle and temple were erect- ed for the residence of God by his own command. There it was his will to be approached, and to these sacred places the victims were required to be brought. Anywhere else they might as well have been ottered, if thej' had had respect only to the offerer ; but they were required to be brought to God, to be offered ac- cording to a prescribed ritual, and by an order of men. appointed for that purpose. Now truh' there is no reason wlij' they sliould be offered in the sanctuary rather than in anj' other place, except that they were offered to the Inhabitant of the sanctuary ; nor could they be offered in his presence without having respect to him. There were some victims whose blood, on the day of atonement, was to be carried into the inner sanctuary ; but for what purpose can we suppose the blood to have been carried into the most secret place of the divine residence, except to obtain the favor of him in whose presence it was sprinl<led .' To this we majr add that the reason given for these sacred servi- ces is not in any case a mere moral effect to be pro- duced upon the minds of the worshippers : they were 'to make atonement,' that is, to avert God's displeas- ure, that the people might not 'die.'
11. " We maj-- find, also, another more explicit illus- tration in the sacrifice of the passover. The sacrificial character of this offering is strongly marked ; for it was an offering brought to the tabernacle ; it was slain in the sanctuary, and the blood was sprinkled upon the altar by the priests. It derives its name from the passing over and sparing of the houses of the Israel- ites, on the door-posts of which the blood of the immo- lated lamb was sprinkled, when the first-born in the houses of the Egyptians were slain ; and thus we have anotlier instance of life being spared by the instituted means of animal sacrifice. Nor need we confine our- selves to particular instances. 'Almost all things,' says an apostle, who surelj^ knew his subject, ' are by the law purged with blood ; and without shedding of blood there is no remission.' Thus, by their very law, and by constant usage, wei'e the Jews familiarized to the notion of expiatorj' sacrifice, as well as by the his- tory contained in their sacred books, especially in Gen- esis, which speaks of the vicarious sacrifices offered by the patriarchs ; and in the book of Job, in which that patriarch is said to have offered sacrifices for the sup- posed sins of his sons ; and where Eliphaz is command- ed, by a divine oracle, to offer a burnt-offering for him- self and his friends, ' lest God should deal with them after their folly.'
12. " On the sentiments of the uninspired Jewish writers on this point, the sulistitution of tlie life of the animal for that of the offerer, and, consequentlj', the expiatory nature of their sacrifices, Outram has given many quotations from their writings, which the reader may consult in his work on Sacrifices. Two or three only may be adduced by way of specimen. R. Levi ben-Gerson says, ' The imposition of the hands of the offerers was designed to indicate that their sins were removed from themselves and transferred to the ani- mal.' Isaac ben-Arama : .' He transfers his sins from himself, and lays them upon the head of the victim.' R. Moses ben-Naclinian saj's, with respect to a sinner offering a victim, ' It was just that his blood should be shed, and that his body should be burned ; but the Creator, of his mere}', accepted the victim from him as his substitute and ransom, that the blood of the an- imal might be shed instead of his l)lood — that is, that the blood of the animal might be given for his Ufa.'
EXPOSITION
424
EXTREME UNCTION
13. " Full of these ideas of vicarious expiation, then, the apostles wrote and spoke, and the Jews of their time heard and read, the hooks of tlie New Testament. The Socinian pretence is, tliat the inspired penmen used tiie sacriticial terms which occur in tlieir writings figuratively ; but we not only reply, as before, that they could not do this honestly unless they had given notice of tiiis new application of the established terms of the Jewish theolog}'; but, if this be assumed, it leaves us wholly at a loss to discover what that reallj' was whicli they intended to teach by these sacriticial terms and allusions. They are themselves utterl_v si- lent as to this point; and the var\-ing theories of those who reject the doctrine of atonement, in fact, confess that their writings afford no solution of the difficult}'. If, tiiercfore, it is blasphemous to suppose, on the one hand, tliat inspired men should write on purpose to mislead, so, on the other, it is utterly inconceivable that, had they only been ordinary writers, the}' should construct a figurative language out of terms which had a definite and established sense, without giving any intimation at all that they employed them other- wise than in their received meaning, or telling us why they adopted them at all, and more especially when tlicy knew that they must be interpreted, both by Jews and Greeks, in a sense which, if the Sociniaus are right, was in direct opposition to that which they in tended to convey." — Watson, Theol. Dictionary, s. v.