498 PART iO. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
power, or by moral influence, but as a priest, by offering Himself as an expiatory sacrifice for our sins. To deny this ; to explain away these express teachings of the Scriptures, as mere accommodations to tlie modes of thought prevalent in the age of the Apostles; or to substitute modern ideas of the nature of sacrifices, for those of the Bible and of the whole ancient world ; or to attempt to get at the philosophical truth inclosed in these Scriptural forms, while we reject the forms themselves, are only different ways of substituting our thoughts for God's thoughts, our way of salvation for God's way. If the ordinary authoritative rules of interpretation are to be adhered to, it cannot be denied that tiie Scriptures teach that Christ saves us as a priest by making a full expiation for our sins, bearing the penalty of them in his own person in our behalf.
Christ saves us as a Sacrifice.
Intimately connected with the argument from the priestly office of Christ, and inseparable from it, is that which is derived from those numerous passages in which He is set forth as a sacrifice for sin. Much as the nature of the Old Testament sacrifices has of late years been discussed, and numerous as are the theories which have been advanced upon this subject, there are some points with I'egard to which all who profess faith in the Scriptures, are agreed. In the first place, it is agreed that Christ was in some sense a sac- rifice for the sins of men ; secondly, that the sense in which He was a sacrifice is the same as that in which the sin offerings of the Old Testament were sacrifices ; and, thirdly, that the true Scriptural idea of sacrifices for sin is a historical question and not a matter of speculation. According to Michaelis, they were mere fines ;^ ac- cording to Sykes, federal rites ; accoi'ding to others, expressions of latitude, offerinirs to God in acknowledgment of his goodness : according to others, they were symbolical of the surrender and de- votion of the life of the offerer to God ; ^ according to others, they were confessions of sin and symbolical exhibitions of penitence ; and according to others, their whole design and effect was in some way to produce a salutary moral impression.^ It is admitted that the
1 This also is the doctrine of Hofmann in his Schriftbeweis. It is one of the principal objects of Delitzsch in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews and in the long Ex- cursus attached to that admirable work, to contest the doctrine of Hofmann on the nature of the work of Christ.
'^ This is the theory advocated by Dr. Bahr, in his Symholik.
8 Keil, in his Biblische Archaologie, and many others, give substantially this moral view. According to Keil, sacrifices were designed to teach the translation of the sinnerfrom a state of alienation from God to a state of grace. Dr. Young, in his lAfflit and Life of Men, repre- Bents them as Bahr does, as indicating the surrender of the soul to God, and %s intended to