from God the Father honour and glory, THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED!" It is in him, as the subject either of promise, of prophecy, of typical institution, or of direct testimony, that God has all along from the beginning, made himself known to men as "the God of peace." It is in him that he "reconciles the guilty unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”

Had nothing further been said respecting the mercy-seat, we might have been led to conclude, that Jehovah appeared there in the exercise of mere mercy; I mean of mercy unconnected with any kind of satisfaction for sin.-With the description of the propitiatory itself, we must, however, connect the account which is elsewhere given of the manner in which it was to be approached by the worshipper; the high priest being expressly enjoned to draw near to Him who dwelt between the cherubim, both in his own behalf, and in behalf of the people, according to certain prescribed rites. A particular account of these is contained in the sixteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, of which a few verses will show you their general nature, sufficiently for our present purpose. Ver. 2, 3, 11, 15. "And the Lord said unto Moses, speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place, within the vail, before the mercy-seat, which is upon the ark, that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat. Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place, with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering. And Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin offering which is for himself, and shall make an atonement for himself, and for his house, and shall kill the bullock of the sin offering which is for himself. And he shall take a censer full of burning coals from off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the vail. And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy-seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not. And he shall take the blood of the bullock and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy-seat eastward; and before the mercy-seat shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times. Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the vail, and do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy-seat, and before the mercy-seat.”

This goat of the sin offering, as we learn from the intermediate verses, was one of two, which Aaron was to take from the congregation of the children of Israel: and after it had been thus offered in sacrifice, and its blood brought within the vail, the remaining goat, with all the iniquities of the children of Israel laid upon its head, by the solemn vicarious confession of the High-priest, was to be sent off alive into the wilderness, bearing away emblematically, as a devoted victim, this load of atoned and acknowledged guilt.-The figure was necessarily double: the slain goat typifying the atonement of Christ, and the scape-goat representing its efficacy.

But the circumstance which I wish at present to impress particularly on your attention, is, that the mercy-seat was to be approached with blood; with the blood of atonement; for such it is, in various parts of the chapter, declared to have been. This blood was to be brought within the vail, and to be sprinkled on, and before the mercy-seat: and while the sacrificial blood was thus presented, the burning incense was, by the cloud of ascending smoke, to diffuse its grateful fragrance, in emblematic testimony of the Divine satisfaction: and this satisfaction is, accordingly, elsewhere expressed, in connexion with the sacrifice of Christ, and with the offerings by which it was typified, by Jehovah's “smelling a sweet savour.”

The mercy-seat, then, in order to Jehovah's appearing there as the God of grace, consistently with the glory of his name, must, it appears, be stained with the "blood of sprinkling,”. that "blood that maketh atonement for the soul." The reason why the blood was specifically appointed for this purpose, is emphatically assigned in the subsequent chapter of the book of Leviticus." For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." The blood then was an atonement for the soul, because it was the life of the victim; and because it was the appointed atonement for the soul, it was to be held sacred, on pain of death.

It is true, that in the chapter of Leviticus first referred to, atonement is said to be made for places and for instruments of service as well as for persons. "And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all

their sins and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness. And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the Lord, and shall make an atonement for it, and shall take of the blood of the bullock, and of the blood of the goat, and shall put it upon the horns of the altar round about. And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel."

I would remark, as a good deal of stress is laid by the adversaries of atonement on the circumstance I am now considering, that, in the verses last read, there is a marked connection between the atonement for the holy place and for the instruments of Divine service, and the pollution and guilt of the children of Israel. It is from their guilt and pollution that the necessity for such atonement is represented as arising: so that the atonement for the holy place, the tabernacle, and the altar, is still in some sense an atonement for the sins of the people, which are considered as cleaving to, and polluting, and unfitting for the service of God, the places and the instruments of their worship. Of this the verses last quoted are of themselves a sufficient evidence. The apostle Paul, in a similar manner, connects the two ideas" of purifying with blood the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry," and of the atonement made, by the same means, "for the errors of the people."

The law then, I must now observe, by which it was enjoined on pain of death, that the mercy-seat should not be approached otherwise than with blood, strikingly represented the necessity of the shedding of the blood of Christ, in order to his being the true propiatory; that is, in order to God's being IN HIM WELL PLEASED," and thus accessible to sinners as suppliants for mercy. And agreeably to this, it may be noticed, that the declaration of God's satisfaction in his beloved Son, which came from the "excellent glory" on "the holy mount," was connected with the subject of conference between Jesus and his heavenly visitants," the decease which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem."

The first of our propositions is further confirmed, by the correspondence of the current language of Scripture with the meaning of this particular type, as it has been now explained. The doctrine of atonement, or propitiation, pervades the whole

of the inspired volume. The following passages and expressions, are only a selection, to which a great many more of the same kind might be added." He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquities of us all :" "For the transgression of my people was he stricken :”. "Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin :" He shall bear their iniquities :". -"He bore the sin of many :". "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world :"-" The son of man is come, to give his life a ransom for many :"-" This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many, for the remission of sins :". "The bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world :-"Who gave himself for our sins:""Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us :"-" Who gave himself a ransom for all :"

"Now once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself:"-"Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's, for this he did once when he offered up himself:”—“ Who, his own self, bare our sins in his own body on the tree:"-" For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God:""The blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin :"-" Unto him that loved us, and washed us in his own blood from our sins, be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen!"—"Thou wast slain, and has redeemed us to God by thy blood."

If such passages as these, which are taken from the prophets, from John the Baptist, from Christ himself, and from his apostles, do not convey the ideas of substitution and atonement, is it possible by human language to convey these ideas at all? What other words and phrases could we select, if it were our special desire to express them more distinctly?

In these passages, you will have perceived, there is a very frequent reference, when the death of Christ is spoken of, to the sacrifices of the old dispensation. Now, although the victims which were slain at the altar, and "whose blood was brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin," could not by

any virtue of their own, take away the guilt of transgression, so as to save the sinner from its future eternal punishment :-(this the apostle affirms was "not possible," and its impossibility was indicated by the constant repetition of the same stated offerings) yet they were beyond all reasonable question propitiatory in their nature: "their blood was brought into the sanctuary for sin ;" and they procured, when duly offered, the remission of its temporal consequences. Some of them were appointed for ceremonial omissions and uncleannesses, and others for the transgression of precepts, more directly of a moral nature. But the general idea of atonement pervades and characterizes the whole. It seems to have been the principle on which the Mosaic law was framed, that" without shedding of blood there could be no remission." In this marked and prominent feature of its character, it was prefigurative of the true atonement that was to be made for sin "in the fullness of time.” It was in this way especially, by typical illustration, that God's method of justifying the ungodly was, as the apostle expresses it in the twentieth verse, witnessed by the law." Divest these rites of their typical import, and they become utterly unworthy of the wisdom by which they were appointed. Worthless in themselves, their sole value arose from their being " figures of that which was to come." And from this nature, as described in the law, they could not, if they were types at all, be typical of anything else than of a true and proper sacrifice for sin. The animal sacrifices, which from the sacred history, we know to have been offered before the law, even from the earliest times, had the same typical meaning and design. They were only embodied, and perhaps at the same time, multiplied and varied, in the Mosaic ritual;-that law of which the leading feature is expressed by Paul, when he denominates it, a "schoolmaste r (to direct) to Christ."

If we admit the hypothesis, that the redemption of a lost world by the propitiatory sacrifice of the Son of God, was, from the beginning, the Divine intention, we are furnished with a ready and satisfactory explanation of what otherwise remains, notwithstanding all the ingenious attempts of philosophical men to account for it, involved in inexplicable mystery,-I mean the origin of animal sacrifice, and the universal traditionary prevalence of it among mankind. On the supposition in question, nothing can be simpler or more natural : on any