raelite would have been excused from offering them. It was simply then, as conferring a legal righteousness in the sight of God, that they must have regarded them. The same conclusion follows, if we consider the prophet Micah's declaration upon the same subject b: "Wherewith," says he, "shall I come before the Lord, and bow my"self before the high God? shall I come be"fore him with burnt offerings, with calves of a 66 year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou"sands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of "oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgres 66 sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my "soul?" Though these words are properly delivered in the person of Balak, yet Micah, like the other individuals before named, knew, that as a member of the Jewish community in particular, he was bound, according as the occasion might require, to honour his God by the observance of such like sacrificial institutions. Consequently, he too must have considered them as conferring simply a legal or external righteousness, upon the performer of them. Whether indeed any serious and enlightened members of that community, any of the good people who lived under the elder dispensation, perfectly understood its nature either in the respect, of which we are now speaking, or b Micah vi. 6, 7. in any other, I will not undertake to say. The probability is that they did not. Certain vague and undefined notions of the benefits which would result to themselves and others from the coming of the Messiah, they might have had, and even of the mode in which those blessings were to be procured to them. Still that it was no real righteousness or justification in the sight of God, which the sin offerings of that covenant under which they lived, and in the solemn occasions of which they were so often called upon to join, availed to procure, is, from what we have already said, abundantly evident. Nor is it less so, that it was their duty to offer up such religious worship to Almighty God; that without it, in short, they would not have been entitled to whatever benefits flowed to them from their peculiar relation to him. If ever, then, they did revolve such subjects in their minds, it must only have been a legal or ceremonial righteousness, which, as one of the beneficial consequences flowing to them from their observance, they regarded those sin offerings as procuring c. c I have affirmed and endeavoured to prove, that it was to avert the temporal punishment of sin that those sin offerings, so far as their immediate and primary purpose was concerned, were intended. Whenever then, by Jehovah, they were accepted, such was their purpose and efficacy. Instances are, notwithstanding, upon record, when owing to some peculiar aggravation of the offence committed, the offender was not But whatever may have been the real amount of knowledge and information upon this subject, which enlightened the mind of the serious and allowed thus to restore himself to favour with his Maker; but where the curse of temporal death denounced by the divine Legislator against the transgression of his revealed Law, was suffered to take its due effect. Thus in the case of Achan, who in express opposition to the divine command had secreted a portion of the spoil of Jericho, no atonement was permitted. Thus too, that sabbath-breaker, whose offence is recorded in Numbers xv, was put to death without mercy; God's dealings with the people, during their wanderings in the wilderness, as often as they had provoked him by their repeated and aggravated instances of rebellion, affording moreover many such examples, when to restore the offender or offenders to favour, the offering up of such sacrifices, by way of expiation, was not allowed. The severity of the Law in such cases is, perhaps, what the Apostle is alluding to, when in a certain passage of the Hebrews, he speaks of those who despised Moses' Law, dying without mercy under two or three witnesses. If "he," says he, "that despised Moses' Law "died without mercy under two or three witnesses; of how "much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy," &c. But though, when the offence in question was aggravated by this extra degree of guilt, such was the awful consequence resulting from it, still we are not to suppose, that the sin offering upon other occasions, when duly and solemnly presented to God as an atonement for the individual's guilt, did not avail to procure that species of forgiveness, of which we were speaking, and to reinstate the offending Jew, as a Jew, into favour with his Maker. Occasionally Jehovah saw fit to exercise severity as well as goodness towards his people. Accordingly it is in the light of such severity as was deemed by him for special reasons fit and necessary, that we must regard those instances of his providential dispensations towards them, before alluded to. reflecting Israelite, should it be next inquired, wherein consisted the figurative or mystic import of these sacrifices, we may answer, that thereby was prefigured the sacrifice of the death of Christ. Accordingly, with obvious allusion to such sacrifices, Jesus Christ is in the later scriptures frequently spoken of as one who stood towards us in the same relation as the Levitical sin offering did to the Hebrew worshipper: "Behold," says John the Baptist, "the Lamb of God, which taketh 66 away the sin of the world." Thus again, by St. John the evangelist, in the book of Revelation, he is characterized as "the Lamb slain from "the foundation of the world e." It is, moreover, the same doctrine which is taught us, when he is simply spoken of as the Lamb. Again, saith St. Peter, we have not been "redeemed with cor 66 ruptible things, as silver and gold; ... but with "the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb with"out blemish and without spot f." The same too is the idea under which St. Paul represents him to us: "For even Christ our Passover is sacri"ficed for us: therefore let us keep the feast," &c. That is, he means to tell us that Jesus Christ stands as much in the relation of a paschal lamb to us, as the animal appointed by the Law to be slain, and selected for this purpose, ever did d John i. 29. e Rev. xiii. 8. g 1 Cor. v. 7, 8. to the Jewish worshipper. What, therefore, we may contend for is this, that such language would not have been used by the inspired writers of the New Testament to describe either the person, or the sufferings of Jesus Christ, had not the sin offerings of the Levitical law borne an intended typical reference to him; in short, had he not been that real sacrifice for sin, to which they pointed in the manner mentioned by us. And not merely is it in language borrowed from the ritual of the elder dispensation, that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is itself represented, but expressions taken from the same ritual, are made use of to designate the beneficial consequences flowing to the Christian worshipper from that sacrifice. Thus we are said by him, viz. Christ, "to have received the atonement ;" and also, "in him to have redemption through his blood i;” and again "to have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lambk," &c.: in all which instances the terms made use of to characterize the blessings derived to us from the death of Christ, atonement and redemption, strictly speaking, call our attention to that legal satisfaction or equivalent for sin, which the Hebrew worshipper, in order to procure the forgiveness of his offences, was obliged by his law 66 Ephes. i. 7; Col. i. 14. k 1 Peter i. 18, 19. E |