The Pulpit Commentary — Leviticus — Section 9

were nothing in themselves is a lesson constantly brought before the Jews. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of th8' burnt offerings of rams, I\Ild the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not tn the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats." That the offering of the sacrifice was effioo.clo118 in itself for atonement as an opus operatum, was man's perversion of the truth; a perversion that is consonant with all that we know of human nature, of which every age testifies that it will hold tenaciously to the outward forms of religion, and with difficulty maintain its spirit. The Jew was never taught that the slaying or offering, of the animal was an atonement in itself. Neither the animal nor the mlnchah was a substitute for something else-a commutation, but a foreshadowing, an educating oC the world for the appreciation of the one atonement. As the sabbatical division, of days and years were to familiarize Israel with the idea of a final rest; as the cities of refuge were to familiarize them with the idea of salvation; as the most remarkable institntion of the goel, the kinsman-redeemer, was to familiarize them with the idea of redemption ;-so the most elaborate ritual of sacrifice was to train them for the expectation of the offering of Jesus Christ once for all on the cross, for the reconciliation of the world. It was the great sacrament of the old world. Thus, then, the nature and the object of the Mosaic sacrifice seems very evident; and its origin, with that of all its most remarkable accompaniments, was Divine. 'l'he further question now arises, What was the origin of other and previous sacrifices? First of all. the idea of sacrifice, as connected with the worship of Jehovah, was not originated under the Mosaic dispensation. J etbro, before the institutions of Mount Sinai, " took a burnt offering (ol,a,h) and sacrifices (zihachim) for God." These are the same words that are in use afterwards under the Mosaic dispensation, " .And Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God" (Exod. xviii. 12) -not an ordinary, but, no doubt, the sacrificial feast, the old-world sacrament. Again, Ja.cob, on the eve of his memorable parting with Laban, "offered sacrifice upon the mount, and called his brethren to eat bread." The sacrifice here, again, was the uba,cli; and was not the "eating bread" the same sacrificial feast? Noah also on coming out of the ark "builded an altar" (mizbeach, from zabach, to slay), "and ,took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl " ( i.e. such as were eaten), "and offered burnt offerings (oloth) on the altar.'' Of Abel also, in the very first generation of historical men, we know that he " brought of the firstlinge of his :flock and of the fat thereof," as an offering unto the Lord; and why was his offering acceptable but that it was brougM in obedience to God's own express direction? The animals sacrificed were always food animals. Twice the sacrifice is mentioned in connection with a meaL And in ExodUB, " to hold a feast" and " to sacrifice" seem to refer to the 11ame event. The inference, therefore, is by no means extravagant, that the pr&-Mosaic sacrifices were of precisely the same kind as those of the Mosaic.dis. pensation. The "clean" animals used for sacrifice were so used because they were the animals used for food. (The theory, it may be observed, that animal food was not used before the Deluge seems to rest on no foundation whatever.) And if food was consecrated to the worship of Jehovah from the days of Adam, as food is now con- secrated by the words of Jesus himself to the same worship in the Lo~d'e Supp~r, where ■hall we seek for the origin of that significant feast, and the ritual of its observance, but in Jehovah himself? • It may not be unimportant, as a confirmation of such a view of the matter, to note here that the Mosaic dispensation, in probably every point, would se~m to have ~en a renewal of former Divine directions as to the externals of wbrsh1p. The leading f.aturee of the Mosaic dispensation wear the appearance rather of a reformation thaD  AN ESSAY ON SACRU'ICE. xi-