Christians. That this world-wide belief in the necessity of expia- tion even among the heathen ; this uniform conviction of the Hebrews that the sacrifices, which they were commanded to offer for sin, were expiatory ; this concurrent judgment of the Christian Church in all ages and places are, after all, mere error and delu- sion ; that sv;ch is not the teaching either of the natural conscience, or of the Hebrew Scriptures, or of Christ and his Apostles, is abso- lutely incredible. The attempt to overthrow a conviction thus general and permanent, is chimerical.
4. But tliese arguments from general conviction and assent, although perfectly valid in such cases as the present, are not those on which the faith of Christians rests. They find the doctrine of expiatory sacrifices clearly taught in Scripture ; they see that the sin offerings under the Old Testament were expiations.
The Old Testament Sacrifices Expiatory.
This is plain from the clear meaning of the language used in ref- erence to them. They are called sin offerings ; trespass offerings, i. e., offerings made by sinners on account of sin. They are said to bear the sins of the offender ; to make expiation for sin, i. e., to cover it from the sight of God's justice ; they are declared to be intended to secure forgiveness, not through repentance or reformation, — these are presupposed before the offering is brought, — but by shedding of blood, by giving soul for soul, life for life. The reason assigned in Leviticus xvii. 11, why blood should not be used for food, was that it was set apart to make expiation for sin. The Hebrew is "iQr-b n:!3''ntc'D5"bv, which the Septuagint renders i^tXda-KeadaL Trepl twv ipvxiov i'li-Lov ; and the Vulgate, " Ut super altare in eo expietis pro animabus vestris." The elder Michaelis expresses clearly the meaning of the passage and the design of the prohibition, when he says (On Leviti- cus xvii. 10), " Ne sanguis res sanctissima, ad expiationem immun- dorum a Deo ordinata, communi usu profanaretur." The last clause of the verse, which in our version is rendered, "For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul," is more literally and cor- rectly rendered, " For blood by (its) soul or life makes atonement ; " or, as Bahr and Fairbaini translate it, " The blood atones through the soul." The latter writer correctly remarks,^ " This is the only sense of the passage that can be grammatically justified ; for the preposition n after the verb to atone (-ID3) invariably denotes that by which the atonement is made ; while as invariably the person or ob- ject for which is denoted by b or bl?." — Aben Ezra, quoted by 1 Typology, edit. Philadelphia, 1857, vol. ii. p. 288, note.
502 PART m. Ch. Vn. - SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
Bahr, had briefly indicated the right interpretation. " Sanguis anima, quae sibi inest, expiat." It seems impossible that this and similar express declarations of the Old Testament, that sacrifices for sins were expiations, can be reconciled with the modern speculation that they were symbolical expressions of devotion to God, or means of eff'ecting a reformation of the offender, who because of that ref- ormation was restored to God's favour.
The argument, therefore, is that the Scriptures expressly declare that these sacrifices were made for the expiation of sin. This idea is expressed by the word "153, to cover, to hide from view, to blot out, to expiate. Hence the substantive "isb means that which delivers from punishment or evil. It is the common word for an atonement, but it also is used for a ransom, because it is rendered to secure deliverance. Thus the half shekel required to be paid by every male Israelite as a ransom for his soul was called a nsb (in Greek, XvTpov, or Xvrpa). See Exodus xxx. 12—16 : " When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel, .... then shall they give every man a ransom npb) for his soul unto the Lord, .... half a shekel .... the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than half a shekel, when they give an offering to the Lord, to make an atonement ("iSDb, Gr. i^iXdarao-daL) for your souls." Here it is impossible to mistake the meaning. The half shekel was a ransom, something paid to secure deliver- ance from evil. It was not a symbol of devotion, or an expression of penitence, but a paym»ent of a stipulated ransom. That the half shekel bore no proportion to the value of a man's life, or the blood of a victim to the value of the soul, does not alter the case. The idea is the same. The truth taught is that satisfaction must be made if sinners are to be saved. The constantly recurring expres- sions, "to make atonement for sin ; " " to make atonement on the horns of the altar; " " to make atonement for the sins of the people," etc., which are correct renderings of the Hebrew phrases which mean " to make expiation," as understood from the beginning, cannot be reconciled with any other theory of sacrifices than that of vicarious satisfaction. In Numbers xxxv. 31, it is said, " Ye shall take no satisfaction ("ipb, XuVpa, pretium), for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death ; but he shall be surely put to death .... the land cannot be cleansed (~iSD^ ; Septuagint, i$tXaardrjaeTaL ; Vul- gate, wee aliter expiari potest} of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it." Here again there can be no mistake. To cover sin, "i???, is to expiate it by a penal satisfaction ; expiation is expressed, as we have seen, by -id!d, which lite*'