PULPIT COMMENTARY, EDITED BY THE REV. CANON H. D. M. SPENCE, M.A., VICAR AND RURAL DEAN OF ST. PANCRAS, AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD REV. CANON F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. London: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1882. PULPIT COMMENTARY, EDITED BY THE REV. CANON H. D. M. SPENCE, M.A., VICAR AND RURAL DEAN OF ST. PANCRAS, AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD Exposition and Homiletics. REV. F. MEYRICK, M.A., RECTOR OF BLICKLING, PREBENDARY OF LINCOLN, AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE Homilies by Various Authors. REV. PROF. R. A. REDFORD, LL.B., M.A. REV. W. CLARKSON, B.A. REV. R. M. EDGAR, M.A. London: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1882. AN ESSAY ON SACRIFICE. BY THE REV. RICHARD COLLINS, M.A. WHAT is the origin, true character, and proper place of sacrifice as a part of religion? Half a century ago, when many of us were schoolboys, there was certain definite teaching on this subject. Probably nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand educated Englishmen, who had seriously turned their thoughts to the matter, were perfectly satisfied with the view, and regarded it as almost axiomatic, that sacrifice was a divinely appointed religious rite, intended to typify and educate the world for one Great Sacrifice, which Great Sacrifice having been accomplished, there was no need for, or even place for, any future sacrifice, truly so called, in the Christian Church. I do not put the matter thus under the idea that the consensus of antiquity is necessarily any warrant for the truth of a doctrine, but only because the view of sacrifice that I have alluded to has seemed to multitudes so scriptural, so simple, so fully to account for the peculiarities and mysteries of the subject, that in reconsidering it we should be led to use the utmost diligence in finally satisfying our minds as to its true place and character. For we must reconsider it, if not for our own satisfaction, at least for the satisfaction of those we may have to teach. This duty is forced upon us by the fact that the waves of modern opinion have rudely shaken our ancient, and what perhaps we considered our orthodox, notions about sacrifices; and, indeed, it has been not merely a shaking, but a complex shaking-one wave rolling the notion in one direction and another in an opposite one, so that we feel that we must first secure the notion before we can assign it its true place in history and in reference to the Christian religion. Men, probably equals in intellectual force and learning, have lately propounded views as to the nature and office of sacrifice so diametrically contradictory the one to the other that both cannot be true: the truth must either reside in the one, to the total exclusion of the other, or it must be found between the two, or beyond either. According to one view, sacrifice is a mistake of man's still undeveloped reason in the days of his ignorant wonder. The inexorable laws of nature pressed upon man's infant intelligence, so that he worshipped them in fear, and exalted them into gods. The inevitable begat the idea of an inflexible, exacting justice which must be satisfied or appeased. Hence arose the idea of propitiation before the presence of this rigorous justice, at length personified, by the immolation of the best a man had-the fruit of his body, or some other costly human sacrifice; a sacrifice which was, as human reason became more highly developed, commuted by the offering of animal instead of human life. A further development, as human reason grew, was a mere self-sacrifice, not of blood, but of service, as in the case of the Buddhist. And the last stage of development, according to this teaching, is the elimination from mankind of every sacrificial altar and every dogma having a sacrificial aspect. According to the other view, not only were animal sacrifices of Divine institution, LEVITICUS. b |
