the daya of the great Cathers of the Hebrew nation. Whatever Divine influences were brought to bear upon Abel in the first recorded sacrifice-and it is ea.sy to exaggerate those influences to the detriment of the inspiriting teaching of the narrative-it is manifest that from that time onwards the ever-growing system of worship by sacrifice waa almost wholly a human development. "Almost wholly," we say, for sacrificial revelations were given to Noah and Abraham, but the one was simply an exhortation to sacrifice, and the other a correction of an erroneous inference. In fact, the patriarchal sacrifices are apparently representative of pure ethnic sacrifices, whereas the Divir,e acknowledgment and improvement of human religious ideas testify at once to the hardness of the human heart and to the gracious condescension of Jehovah. So it is likewise evident that the Levilical sacrifices were an advance upon the patriarchal in complexity. Hereditary priests have taken the place of the father of the family, and all the various ceremonial of the court, the holy place, and the holiest, iu all the mutations of the Jewish year, have superseded those two simple varieties mentioned in earlier times, the burnt offering and the festal offering-which were adapted on occasion, as best they could be, to all the changing and contrasted emotion of the religious life. A third difference between the two dispensations is seen in the later localization. Abraham, Isaac, and:Jacob, wherever God bad revealed himself and made his presence known, could present their offerings of praise, and erect their holy places. The Levitical sacrifices are legitimate, so testifies the whole Pentateuch, at one sanctuary alone. There being a localization of Deity, or rather of his gracious presence, acceptabla sacrifice must ba offered in the neighbourhood of the mercy-seat. There is a clearness too in the doctrinal implications of the Levitical rites, which is conspicuously absent from the earlier Corms of worship. No such array of parallel principles can be inferred from the Genesis as has been deduced from the Exodus and the Leviticus. The acceptability of sacrifice, as a testimony to self-sacrifice even. has very much less evident sanction for Abraham than for Moses. The point is so certain that attention needs simply be drawn thereto. To an additional point, however, it is necessary to refer with some distinctness ; the patriarchal cultus was a worship by presentation, the Levitical cultus was a worship by atonement as well No reference is made in the Genesis, whether direct or indirect, by express statement, by ritual, or by any mention of a special manipulation of the blood of the victims offered, to the Levitical doctrine or expiation by blood. Animal sacrifices were made, it is true, but only because stock-farming as well as agriculture formed part or the staple labour of the ancestors of the Jewish nations, and gifts might be therefore made from the former as well as the latter, or because animal food was eaten by them as well as vegetable. The evidence would seem to be conclusive that not only did the Almighty, according to the testimony of the Pentateuch, adopt the results of human religious thought and practice, giving them at the same time a wider bearing and a more assured interpreta- tion, but that he added to that interpretation the very significant doctrine peculiar to Judaism of the atonement for sin by the blood of a substituted victim. And of course all these differences culminated in a difference of practied. Tha educational value of the religion of Moses was higher than that of the pre-Mosaic age, because more accurate and minute in doctrinal significance, just as, for the sama reason, Its value was increased as a discipline. A more developed and sound theology i.s always the cause of a profounde;,, and more useful religious education, and a purer and more satisfying religious worship. :i,;.x:i,; THE LEVITICAL SACRIFICES LITERALLY CONSIDERED.
E. RELATION OF THE LEVITIOAL SACRIFICES TO THE CanmTIAN SAOBIFIOEB. The religions of Moses and Jesus Christ both agree and differ in their eaorificial t&cbing. They agree in dividing their doctrine of sacrifice into two parts ; their doctrine of presentation and their doctrine of atonement, according to both presentation being possible and atonement necessary. They also agree in asserting that atonement must precede sacrifice. They differ in the material, directness, and timeliness of presentation, and in the method and frequency of atonement. To take the latter points first. The New Testament teaches that atonement is made for human sin by the substitution of the life of Jesus for that of the sinner. As Peter expresses it, "Christ, who his own self carried up onr sins in his own body to the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live unto righteousness." Or, as Paul put it, adopting the Jewish synonym of blood for life, "Christ Jesus, ... whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by Lis blood ; " and according to the nature of the case this atonement or propitiation is made once for all. The Old Testament teaches that the Jew is atoned for by the blood, or life, of an animal substitute, which is so far from being presented once for all, that life must be effused on every occasion of worship. Similarly as regards the doctrine of presentation, there is a change of teaching: in the Old Testament, certain prescribed forms of offering are alone allowed, and the man is accepted because of the offering of his substance; in the New, self is more important, and the offering is accepted because of the man. There is an alteration in another respect: the New Testament demands no priestly mediation like that of the tribe of Levi in approaching the Majesty on high. And in yet a third respect there is a change: the offering of a reconciled heart may be made at any time and in any place at the free suggestion of the worshipper, and with- out legal restriction. Without entering, therefore, upon abstract doctrinal discussion, and judging solely by the facts presented by the sacrificial conceptions of the two dispensations, they are manifestly connected, and that as the higher and the lower in a prearranged system of development. There is in Christianity an evident growth iii reasonableness and freedom. In Christianity the fetters of Judaism are snapped, and its unintelligible features are explained. .A.a Augustine said, " In the epoch of the old covenant the new lay latent, e.s a fruit does in a root," or, in the language of more modem times, we may say, the New Testament sacrifices a.re antitypes of those of the Old. In a word, judged by the definition of final cause, Christio.nity is the final cause of Judaism.