2. On the other hand, the great difficulty in the the- ory which refers it to a distinct command of God is the total silence of Holy Scripture — a silence the more remarkable when contrasted with the distinct reference made in Gen. ii to the origin of the Sabbath. Sacri- fice when first mentioned, in the case of Cain and Abel, is referred to as a thing of course; it is said to have been brought by men ; there is no hint of any com- mand given by God. This consideration, the strength of which no ingenuity has been able to impair, al- though it does not actually disprove the formal revela- tion of sacrifice, yet at least forbids the assertion of it, as of a positive and important doctrine. See, for ex- ample (as in Faber's Origin of Sacrifice), the elaborate reasoning on the translation of rSbiPI in Gen. iv, 7. Even supposing the version a " sin-offering coucheth at the door " to be correct, on the ground of general usage of the word, of the curious version of the Sept., and of the remarkable grammatical construction of the masculine participle with the feminine noun (as refer- ring to the fact that the sin-offering was actually a male), still it does not settle the matter. The Lord even then speaks of sacrifice as existing, and as known to exist: he does not institute it. The supposition that the "skins of beasts" in Gen. iii, 21 were skins of animals sacrificed by God's command is a pure assump- tion. The argument on Heb. xi, 4, that faith can rest only on a distinct divine command as to the special occasion of its exercise, is contradicted by the general definition of it given in ver. 1. (See below.)
Nor is the fact of the mysterious and supernatural character of the doctrine of atonement, with which the sacrifices of the O. T. are expressly connected, any con- clusive argument on this side of the question. All al- low that the eucharistic and deprecatory ideas of sacri- fice are perfectly natural to man. The higher view of its expiatory character, dependent, as it is, entirelj' on
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its typical nature, appears but gradually in Scripture. It is veiled under otlier ideas in the case of the patri- archal sacrifices. It is tirst distinctly mentioned in the Law (Lev. xvii, 11, etc.) : but even then the theory of the siii-oflFering, and of the classes of sins to which it referred, is allowed to be obscure and difficult; it is only in the N. T. (especially in the Epistle to the He- brews) that its nature is clearly unfolded. It is as likely that it pleased God gradually to superadd the higher idea to an institution, derived by man from the lower ideas (which must eventually Hnd their justifica- tion in the higher), as that he originally commanded the institution when the time for the revelation of its full meaning was not j'et come. The rainbow was just as truly the symbol of God's new promise in Gen. ix, 13-17, whether it had or had not existed as a natu- ral phenomenon before the Hood. What God sets his seal to he makes a part of his revelation, whatever its origin may be. It is to be noticed (see Warburton, Bir. Leg. ix, c. 2) that, except in Gen. xv, 9, the method of patriarchal sacrifice is left free, without any direction on the part of God, wliile in all the Mosaic ritual the limitation and regulation of sacrifice, as to time, place, and material, is a most prominent feature, on which much of its distinction from heathen sacrifice depend- ed. The inference is at least probable that when (iod sanctioned formally a natural rite, then, and not till then, did he define its method.
See on the question, in adiiition to the above trea- tises, Sykes, Essay on the Nature, Oriyin, aiid Design of Sacrifices ; Taj- lor. Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement (1758); Ritchie, Criticism upon Modern Notions of Sac- rifices (17G1) ; Magee, Discourses on A tonement and Sac- rijices. See also Atone.mknt.
III. Biblical History of Sacrifice.— \. Ante-Mosaic Instances. — In examining the various sacrifices record- ed in Scripture before the establishment of the law, we find that the words specially denoting expiatory sacri- fice (rxijn and C"I,"N) are not applied to them. This fact does not at all show that they were not actually expiatory, nor even that the offerers had not that idea of expiation which must have been vaguely felt in all sacrifices; but it justifies the inference that this idea ■was not then the prominent one in the doctrine of sac- rifice.
The sacrifice of Cain and Abel is called viinchah. al- though in the case of the latter it was a bloody sacri- fice. (So in Heb. xi, 4 the word ^vrna is explained by the Tolg Cujpoic below.) In the case of both it would appeir to have been eucharistic, and the distinction be- tween the offerers to have lain in their " faith" (Heb. xi, 4). Whether that faith of Abel referred to the promise of the Redeemer and was connected with any idea of the typical meaning of sacrifice, or whether it ■was a simple and humble faith in the unseen God, as the giver and promiser of all good, we are not author- ized by Scripture to decide. See Cain.