did, in effect, say, as Isaac so many hundred years before had done, " Behold the fire and the wood ; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" Yea, it gave also the very answer which Abraham had done, " My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering f." Thus, by keeping up the expectation of the Great Sacrifice which all the offerings of the Law pre- figured, it declared, in fact, to every successive generation, that in the fulness of time God would send forth his own Son, to " make his soul an offering for sin," and, by bearing in his own person the iniquities of us all, " to take them away from usg." In short, this fire, and every offering that was consumed by it, directed the attention of every true Israelite to that adorable " Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world11," and who in actual efficiency, as well as in the divine purpose, has been " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world1."]
4. That all who should not be interested in that
great sacrifice must expect His sorest judgments —
[The victims consumed by that fire were considered as standing in the place of men who deserved punishment. This was clearly marked, not only by their being set apart by all Israel, and offered with that express view, but by the offenders themselves putting their hands on the heads of their victims, and transferring their sins to the creatures that were to be offered in sacrifice to Godk. The fire that consumed them was expressive of God's indignation against sin, and declared the doom which the sinner himself merited at God's hands ; yea, and the doom, too, which he himself must experience, if sin should ever be visited on him. It declared, what the New Testament also abundantly confirms, that " God is a consuming fire1; " and that they who shall be visited with his righteous in- dignation, must be " cast into a lake of firem," where " their worm dieth not, and the fire never shall be quenched™." Me- thinks, then, the fire burning on the altar gave to every person that beheld it this awful admonition ; " Who can dwell with the devouring fire? Who can dwell with everlasting burnings0 '?"
In considering this ordinance, it will be proper yet further to declare, II. Its mystical import, as relating to the Church —
The different ordinances of the Jewish Law had at least a two-fold meaning, and, in many instances, a
f Gen. xxii. 7, 8. s Isai. liii. (3, 10. h John i. 29.
1 Rev. xiii. 8. k Lev. iv. 4, 15, 24, 29, 33. ' Heb. xii. 29.
m Rev. xx. 15. n Mark ix. 43, 44, 45, 46, 48. five times. 0 Isai. xxxiii. 14.