This conviction would also prepare you for another lesson taught you by Moses ; namely,
II. That you must be saved altogether by an atoning sacrifice.
This was taught you throughout the whole cere- monial law : the daily and annual sacrifices pro- claimed it to your whole nation. Nor was this merely taught in theory ; it was required of every offender, whatever his sin might be, to bring his sacrifice, in order that it might be put to death in his stead, and deliver him from the condemnation which his sin had merited. Even for sins of igno- rance this was required ; and the offender, whether he were a priest, or an elder, or a ruler, or one of the common people, was required to put his hands on the head of his sacrifice, and thus, by the most significant of all actions, to transfer to it his sinsg. What an instructive ordinance was this ! Yet was the ordinance of the scape-goat, if possible, still more instructive. On the great day of annual expiation, the high-priest, after killing the goat on which the Lord's lot had fallen, was to put his hands on the head of the scape-goat, and to confess over him all the sins of all the children of Israel ; and then the goat was led into the wilderness from before them all, never more to be seen ; that so the removal of their sins might be made visible, as it were, to their bodily eyesh.
Yet, whilst this glorious truth was thus plainly declared, the insufficiency of the legal sacrifices, and the necessity of a better sacrifice, was proclaimed also. For these very sacrifices were to be repeated from year to year; which shewed, that the guilt expiated by them was not fully removed. Hence the very sacrifices were, in fact, no other than an annual remembrance of sins, not finally forgiven. In this light they were viewed by those of your fore- fathers whom you cannot but venerate, and whom
g Lev. iv. 4, 15, 24, 29. h Lev. xvi. 20 — 22.