Heb. X. 3. In those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.
IN the institutions of the Mosaic law, burthensome as they were, God consulted the best interests of his people. Repentance, faith, and obedience, were
inculcated in them all. The daily sacrifices and fre- quent ablutions were intended to shew them, that they stood in need of mercy and of spiritual reno- vation : and the authority with which they were enjoined, taught them, that their whole happhiess depended on an entire submission to the will of God. Those ordinances had also a further use ; which was, to lead the minds of all to the contemplation of mysteries, which should in due season be more fully revealed. They did not themselves convey any solid or lasting benefit : they were mere shadows, which indicated indeed a substance ; but which would vanish away, when that substance should appear. This is the view given of the law in the passage before us. The Apostle says, '' The law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then, would they not have ceased to be offered ? because that the worshippers, once purged, should have had no more conscience of sins." Hence it appears, that the most solemn insti- tutions of the law, not excepting the sacrifices offered ou the great day of annual expiation, were, in fact, no more than mere " remembrances of sins," which could never be removed, but by that better Sacrifice which should in due time be offered.
But that we may have a fuller insight into this subject, I will endeavour more distinctly to shew,
I. For what end those annual remembrances of sins were enjoined —
Doubtless they were intended, as the whole of the Mosaic ritual also was, to separate the Jewish people more entirely from all the nations of the world. But they were more particularly designed,
1. To make them sensible of their need of a Saviour —
[Every offering had this tendency : no man could see his victim bleed, without seeing and acknowledging what was his own desert before God. But, if there had been no day of