ernment. To advance and strengthen their power and craft over the lives and possessions of the people, the priests introduced sacrifices of animals into their religious observances. Not satisfied with sacrifices of animals, as time progressed, they came to include the sacrifice of human beings. This endowed the priesthood with almost unlimited authority and absolute despotism over the lives of men, and furnished a means for the gratification of revenge and the indulgence of personal hatred. The Gods were appeased by sacrifices of those opposed to the domination of the priesthood.

Thus human sacrifice became the means of propitiation for sin; the method of satisfying the demands of a wrathful and exacting deity.

This mode of sacrifice and atonement clearly led up to and foreshadowed the doctrine of atonement, in which Jesus was the central figure and victim, the same idea having existed in pagan religions, thousands of years before Christ was born.

It is a condition, that those who are elected to herald the law and command of God to the human race, must be ready to sacrifice four things, namely, -life, family, wealth and pride. Many prophets and messengers of God, preceded Moses. Symbols and hieroglyphics were used to portray what language afterward expressed. The symbol of life was the heifer or bull; of wealth, the she-goat or cow; of family, the ram; and of pride, the peacock. The latter, on account of its scarcity, was afterward changed to the dove or pigeon, thus making it easier for the people to add to the priests' stores. The prophets unvaryingly taught that spiritual

sacrifice alone was potent with God, but the Hebrews, like all the other races, corrupted this requirement into oblations of material significance, partly through desire for gain, and partly through misunderstanding of the symbols. Thus it is that we find in the Old Testament, the continual record of material sacrifices, which God did not require, and which, by the mouths of His holy prophets, he stigmatized as vain oblations. The idea or doctrine of sacrifice is therefore, erroneous, and a corruption of the truth of God. It had its origin in priestcraft and misinterpretation. Reason repudiates it. The Word of God condemns it. Christ's assent to the words of the scribe, gives us clear comprehension of the true sacrifice which will benefit the soul.

Mark 12, 33: "And to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

In "Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible," by Rev. Heber Newton, page 88, "In a cruise last summer we dropped anchor in a lovely little out-ofthe-way harbor of Buzzards Bay, which proved to be near Pocasset; where, not long ago, a pious man, reading the Hebrew tradition of Abraham and Isaac, as a real command of the Most High, and having this word of the Lord borne on his mind, as spoken to himself, murdered his child in sacrifice to God-no angel interfering to stay his knife: He simply made a reductio ad absurdum. of this use of the Bible."

CHAPTER XI.

CHRIST AND HIS MISSION.

All the Truth is in the Bible, but all the Bible is not the Truth.

In determining the mission of Jesus Christ, we have practically no other historical guidance than the record of the New Testament, which supplements in its form and narration, the scriptures of the Hebrews.

The authenticity of biblical record is, therefore, pre-eminently the important question of investigation and proof upon which we must decide, before code or creed, doctrine or belief can be securely founded. Truth need not fear the light, nor the analysis of human reason.

Investigation and higher criticism, in the true sense of spiritual inquiry, cannot fail to fortify fact, and reveal the essence of inspiration which underlies scriptural record. We have no higher duty than that of seeking the light of this inspiration, and probing, with merciless scrutiny, whatever savors of error and superstition.

The claim of infallibility for the scriptures, can no longer be maintained. In "Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible," page 82, Rev. Heber Newton says "I want today to make more distinct, certain wrong uses of the Bible which grow out of the old view of it; wrong uses from which great mischiefs

have come to the cause of true religion, and great trouble to individual souls; abuses which fall away in the light of a more reasonable understanding of the Bible. The Bible, viewed as a book let down from heaven, whose real 'Author' is God, as the Westminster Catechism affirmed; a book dictated to chosen penmen and written out by their amanuenses under a direction which secured them against error on every subject on which they treated; a book thus given to the world to be an authoritative and infallible oracle for human information on all the great problems of life, naturally calls for uses which, apart from this theory, are gross and superstitious abuses." Also quotation on page 161: "Few, if any, of the books of the Bible stand now as they came from the original authors. Nearly all have been re-edited; most of them many times. Some of them have been worked over by so many hands, and have undergone so many and serious changes that the original writer would scarcely identify his work."

According to the evidence of the Bible itself, many of the sacred writings and prophecies bequeathed to us by the messengers of God, have been omitted from its pages or excluded as uncanonical. Joshua 10-13, "Is not this written in the book of Jashar?"; also II Sam. 1,18: "Behold, it is written in the book of Jashar." I Chron. 29, 29: "Now the acts of David the King, behold, they are written in....

the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book of Gad the seer." II Chron. 9, 29: "Now the

rest of the acts of Solomon... ....are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet and in the prophesy of Ahijah the Shilonite and in the visions of Iddo the seer, against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?" and 12, 15: "Now the acts of Rehoboam... are they not written in the book of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer concerning genealogies?" also 20, 34: "Now the rest of the acts of Jehosaphat. ....behold, they are written in the book of Jehu the son of Hanani," etc.

...

Jude I, 14-15: (Revised Version) "And to these, also, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied saying: 'Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have ungodly wrought and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.""

We have plain testimony in the words of Christ, that at his time, dogma and error had been substituted in the scriptures, for the commandments of God: Matt. 15, 6-9. (Revised Version) "Ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition. Ye hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying: "This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; but in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men;"" and 22, 29: "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God." Also in Mark 7, 9: "Full well do ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your tradition,"