no trace were to be found in the symbol. The dying of the beast is really an absolute ceasing, a simple negative; the beast is and remains dead, and nothing whatever takes place to represent the idea of a resumption of life, brought into being through death. Let it not be said, that this could not be expected, as such a symbolizing would lie beyond the range of possibility; for we can point to Bähr himself, B. ii. 516, 617, where he shews in the transaction with the two birds at the cleansing of the leper, and with the two goats on the day of atonement, that such a thing was quite possible."

So far, the exposure of what is fallacious and unsatisfactory in Bähr's views, has respect only to the first, the symbolical aspect of sacrifice; the other, or sacramental aspect still remains, and there the heterodox character of his views comes still more prominently out. We give first his representation of this bearing of the rite of sacrifice :-" The means of atonement and sanctification must be something apart from the person to be atoned, another thing than himself, and indeed something chosen and appointed by God; for man has not in himself the principle of sanctification; it can proceed only from God, he alone, therefore, can ordain the means of sanctification. . . . But, on the other hand, it must be nothing absolutely different, foreign, or contrary; for it must, at the same time, be the means of salvation (covering), and must, therefore, enter into an exchange of relationship with the person to be sanctified. This, however, was only possible, if it was somehow related to him, if it was analogous in nature, homogeneous. That other thing, through which the nephesh of the offerer was atoned, or covered, was itself again a nephesh.”—II. 212, 213.

Kurtz justly objects to this representation, that it does not properly and fairly touch the important question, how the blood in sacrifice should have come to possess the sacramental character of a means by which the sin or soul was covered, and the offerer was again re-united with Jehovah, and sanctified? Bähr himself seems to be conscious of its defective and unsatisfactory nature; and calls to his aid "the peculiar nature of the Old Testament economy, as in itself external, corporeal, and imperfect, but as such carrying in its bosom the kernel of the perfect, the higher and spiritual. The blood of beasts, which itself was only external, effected also a merely external sanctification and purity. The true and perfect means of salvation and atonement is the blood of Christ, the shedding of which was eo ipso the giving up of his soul (Matth. xx. 28), with which the eternal Spirit was united" (Heb ix. 12, 14.)

แ

This line of argument is the more extraordinary, Kurtz remarks, as the author throughout his whole work manifestly avoids bringing typical references within the circle of his investigations. Such a flying for refuge to an element quite foreign to the whole tendency of his work, therefore, appears as a mere expedient, and betrays the strait in which the author found himself. Still we would not particularly quarrel with him for making our Lord and his atoning death a sort of cat's-paw for his literary necessities, if indeed it had been the aim of Christ's incarnation and death to be a cat's-paw for necessities of another kind. This, therefore might not prevent us from heartily rejoicing at the open and decided recognition here given of the typical bearing of the most important part of the ritual worship. But we

are again checked in this joy, since it is not enough to have robbed the Old Testament sacrifice of its true import to us; the same must also be done in regard to the far more important sacrifice of Christ. The mediation of Christ is therefore only a―though indeed the perfectest—' symbolical substitution, not a real one, no exchange of places; so that also this sacrificial act, if what it represents is not done over again on the part of man, becomes worthless and vain.' Yet the proper character of Christ's death is somewhat away from the point. The question here simply is, whether what is obscure and unsatisfactory in the representation given of the sacramental character of the Old Testament sacrifice, is thereby removed. We think not,--for a transference of the (improved) Old Testament idea to that of the New Testament for the purpose of proving that from this, is only moving in a circle.

"We place in opposition to Bähr the following train of thought upon the important passage in Leviticus :-The soul of the flesh is in the blood. The soul is the seat of feeling, and therefore of lust. But lust gives birth to sin. That properly which sins in man is, therefore, the soul; and as this is associated with the blood, the blood also stands in a causal connection with sin. Now, it is an eternal law, per quod quis peccat per hoc punitur et idem (to make the punishment alight on that which has been used as the organ of sin) The soul, the blood was the moving force, the starting-point of sin; and now in turn against the soul and the blood comes the punishment, the counter-impression on the part of moral government in the world, paralysing the impression of sin. The sin was the offspring of lust; now the punishment recoils upon the lust, and so becomes a reversal of lust, aversion (unlust.) The soul, in so far as it is life, has sinned; it is also punished, in so far as it is life, therefore, with death: death is the wages of sin. The sinner has involved his blood, his soul in guilt; if the claims of justice are satisfied, he must be visited with death-temporal, which, by being allowed to continue, becomes eternal. God, however, does not wish the death of the sinner; he has promised redemption, and already begun to carry it into effect. A manifestation of this tender grace on the part of God is the institution of sacrifice. I have given you, he says, the blood (of the slain victim) upon the altar, to make atonement for your souls. Therefore, blood for blood, soul for soul; that the sinner may escape death, death must alight on the sacrifice; the guiltless blood is shed, in order to cover, to atone for the guilty. Death is the wages of sin; the sacrificed animal suffers death, not in payment of its own sin, for it is without sin, guiltless, but as payment of another's sin; it therefore suffers death as a substitution for the offerer, and Jehovah, who gave the blood as the means of atonement, recognizes this substitution. The blood shed, and flowing out in death, is then the atonement of the sinner; while the sin has been imputed to the victim, the satisfaction that has been made through death is imputed to the sinner."

The learned author proceeds to state at some length, in opposition to certain objections of Bahr, that the Old Testament sacrifices of irrational victims, could not possibly possess the virtue of making a proper satisfaction for the sins; that, in the language of New Testament Scripture, "the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin; and that, consequently, their

expiatory worth was all derived from the blood of the great sacrifice, afterwards to be offered in Christ, to which they pointed the faith of the worshippers. The Old Testament sacrifice was, therefore, only an image of the New, a kind of substitute and compensation for it till the fulness of times." -We subjoin the substance of the replies, which Kurtz has given to the several objections brought byBahr against what he calls the juridical view of the ancient sacrifices, or their vicarious character.

(1.) It is objected, that as the punishment, death, is made prominent in this view, if it were sound, the punishment should have been inflicted by the priest, God's representative; whereas it was the offerer himself who killed the victim.—But the relation, says Kurtz, p. 65, " of punishment to sin, is a necessary one; the punishment is the continuation (no longer depending on the sinner's choice) of the sin, its filling up or complement. Sin is a viola

tion of the righteous government of the world, an impression against the law; the punishment is the law's counter-impression, striking the sinner and paralysing his sin. But all punishment runs out into death, which is the wages of sin. Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death.' Sin, therefore, is a half, incomplete thing, calling for its proper completion in death, which again is not something foreign and arbitrary, but essentially belonging to sin; so that the sinner himself may justly be regarded as self-punished. No doubt, the execution of the punishment might also be properly ascribed to God as the righteous governor of the world; but there is a special propriety in allowing the sinner himself, in the institution of sacrifice, to perform the symbolical act of punishment. For there God appears as the merciful Being, who wills not the death of the sinner, but his atonement, his deliverance and salvation of course in the way of righteousness-the sinner, again, as one who has drawn upon himself through his sin condemnation and death, and conscious of this being the case. Here, then, especially was it peculiarly proper and significant, that he should accuse himself, that he should pronounce his own judgment, should bring it down symbolically upon himself. Whoever can explain how the criminal, that has deserved death, should even desire this, and so put himself out of the reach of the grace of his monarch, can find no difficulty in explaining how the symbolical act of punishment in sacrifice should have been left to the execution of the sinner himself."

(2.) The juridical view, it is again objected, makes the death, not the blood, the means of atonement, contrary to Lev. xvii. 11. To this Kurtz replies, that the objection does not apply to his view, as he does not by any means make the death, but the blood-the blood, however, as shed, as carrying death along with it-the means of atonement. And as the passage referred to treats, not directly of sacrifice, but only of the prohibition against eating blood, it simply indicates that this was done, because in the blood, the lifeblood poured out in death, was to be found by divine ordination the means of atoning for the sins of men, or in other words, saving them from death.

(3) According to this view the wrath of God is appeased through the infliction of death on the victim, and hence not man, but God is atoned. God, however, cannot be and never is the object of the atoning (covering, ).— "The atoning is the design of the sacrifice; God is never the object of this, but only man; for in God there is nothing to be covered, while in man there

is his sin, his desert of condemnation requiring to be covered. No change passes upon God by the atonement, but only on man. It is the same God, who in just displeasure at the sinner, is ready to destroy him; and who, himself unchanged, meets in love and fellowship the justified, whose sin has been atoned. It is the same sun that ministered to the growth and prosperity of the tree, while its roots were implanted in its native soil, and causes it, after having been torn up, to wither and decay. So God remains unchangeably one and the same, whether the saint becomes a sinner, or the sinner a saint, although his agency toward him will display itself in a quite different, and indeed opposite manner."

(4.) If the death of the victim were a punishment, then every sin, for which a sacrifice was brought, must appear deserving of death. But sin-offerings were commanded to be offered for unconscious, and not properly moral, but only theocratical offences. Could God be justly represented as inflicting the punishment of death for such? "The objection (replies Kurtz) proceeds upon a misapprehension of the nature of sin and death. It applies a subjective measure to sin, and overlooks its objective aspect. Every sin is a transgression of the divine will; this is the common basis of the smallest, as well as of the greatest sin. In this point of view every sin is alike deserving of the curse; death is the wages of the least, as well as the greatest. The death of the victim stands parallel to the death of the offerer, who has deserved death by his sin. The latter is certainly not mere corporeal death, but death in general, in the entire compass, which the usage of Scripture gives to the word death. That the death of the sacrificed beast was not equivalent to this death, is obvious; as it is also obvious, that the nephesh of the victim, which was given in death, was in no respect equivalent to the nephesh of the sinner; but in this precisely stood the imperfection of the ancient sacrificial system, which implied and predicted a better one." The learned author might here also have pressed the objection as equally valid against Bahr's own view, as the juridical view he opposes. For if such sins, as those referred to, could not justly expose the individual to the punishment of death, how could they any more, according to the theory of Bahr, produce separation from God, moral death, and require a sacrifice to bring him near again? If they should not have entailed the one consequence, we cannot understand how they should have entailed the other.

(5.) The juridical view, it is once more alleged, exchanges the symbolical substitution for the real, the religious for the righteous; the sacrifice loses all its (symbolical) religious character, and is turned into a purely external mechanical act.—To this Kurtz briefly replies, that it is an entire misrepresentation of the vicarious character of the Old Testament sacrifices, as com monly entertained. So far from being an act of a merely outward and mechanical nature, it was expressive of the deepest and most solemn feelings of which the human heart is capable. And the same may be said in a still higher sense of the vicarious death of Christ, which not only the writings of the New Testament, but the experiences also of the most devout in every age, prove to be capable of stirring the inmost depths of the soul, and drawing around it the loftiest thoughts and aspirations.

It is deeply to be regretted that a work distinguished by such learning,

and replete with such depth and freshness of thought, as Bahr's, should carry in its bosom so radical a defect as the false and most unscriptural view of sacrifice, to which the preceding extracts refer. We trust the sounder theology and solid refutation of Kurtz will go far to neutralize the evil in Germany; and tend to re-establish on a firmer basis than ever the view, which Bahr admits (ii. p. 277) to have on its side, not only the most of the rabbinical writers, but also by far the greater number of the most learned and pious of Christian divines. Nor is it to be regarded as any mean confirmation of the truly scriptural character of the view in question, that even such men as Gesenius, De Wette, Winer, and many others of the present day, against strong doctrinal prejudices, have given their assent to it as the doctrine of Scripture. Whatever liberties they have thought themselves warranted to take with the doctrine itself of the vicarious import of ancient sacrifice, they have found the doctrine too plainly written in the Word of God, to deny its existence. And we are persuaded that the more thoroughly the subject is examined and considered in all its bearings, the more deeply and broadly will this doctrine be found to have its foundations laid in the pages of revelation, and the clearer also the conviction of its necessary connection with the peace of the sinner and the essential interests of righteousness.

APPENDIX C.

ON THE TERM AZAZEL.

THE term Azazel, which is four times used in connection with the ceremony of the day of atonement, and nowhere else, is still a matter of controversy, and its exact and determinate import is not to be pronounced on with certainty. It is not precisely applied to the live-goat as a designation ; but this goat is said to be "for Azazel" (b.)

1. Yet one of the earliest opinions prevalent upon the subject regards it as the name of the goat himself; Symmachus τράγος ἀπερχόμενος, Aquila rg. àñoλeλvμμévos, Vulg. hircus emissarius; so also Theodoret, Cyrill, Luther, Heine, Vater, and the English translators, scape-goat. When taken in this sense, it is understood to be compounded of az (1) a goat, and azal (318) to send away. The chief objections to it are, that az never occurs as a name for a buck or he-goat (in the plural it is used as a general designation for goats, but in the singular occurs elsewhere only as the name for a she-goat), and that in Lev. xvi. 10 and 26, Azazel is expressly distinguished from the goat, the one being said to be for the other. For these reasons, this view is now almost entirely abandoned. 2. It is the name of a place, either a precipitous mountain, in the wilderness to which the goat was led, and from which he was thrown headlong, or a lonely region where he was left; so Pseudo-Jonathan, Abenezra, Jarchi, Bochart, Deyling, Reland, Carpzov, &c. The chief objection to this view is, that it does not seem to accord with what is said in v. 10: "to let him go for Azazel into the wilderness," which would then mean, for a desert place into a desert place. 3. It is