The argument for the divine origin of sacrifice may be stated thus. (a) Sacrifice has existed almost universally among men, which seems to indicate one source. (b) It has had such a wide-spread. existence, although naturally repugnant to human feelings, viewed as the expression of worship to wards God. To slaughter and shed the blood of an innocent creature as an act pleasing to the Divine Being, placating his wrath and conciliating his favour, seems absurd and profane. Such an act would rather appear to be displeasing and hateful to him. Once granting the divine origin of the rite of sacrifice, its fearful perversion is easily under stood. (c) The adoption of the sacrificial rite into the worship of God by his command seems strongly in favour of its origin in his own appointment or suggestion. It is so hard to think otherwise, that the fact seems decisive. (a') Then the first sacri fice we read of was acceptable to God, which would scarcely have been the case had it originated in the mere feeling or fancy of the worshipper. The non-acceptance of Cain's fruit-offering leads to the same conclusion. True, the main reasons of the different treatment of the brothers lay in their different dispositions ; but did not this difference of disposition cause the difference in their offerings? (e) In Heb. xi. 4, Abel is said to have offered a fuller sacrifice (7rAelova Buo-lav) than Cain, because he offered in faith. His faith led him to offer the fuller sacrifice ascribed to him. But faith implies a divine revelation on the subject, or a divine war rant for the act ; otherwise, there could have been no place for faith. However pious the intention, he would have acted on a mere peradventure, or baseless confidence, not certainly by faith.' For these and other reasons we regard the rite of sacri fice to have been of divine origin.
V. It remains now to inquire into the CONNEC TION BETWEEN THE SACRIFICES OF THE O. T. AND THE GREAT SACRIFICE OF THE NEW. Sacri fice was a divine institute. It occupied a prominent place in the Mosaic law ; yet it was not valued by God for its own sake. It was therefore designed to subserve some high ulterior purpose. Besides being, in part, a symbol of self-consecration to God, and of praise and prayer, it served to keep alive in the heart a sense of sin and of its damnable nature ; to indicate the need of an atonement ; to familiarise in the congregation of God the ideas of vicarious suffering, propitiation, and compensation due for the injury done by sin to God and his law. Sacri
fice did also serve to remove various disabilities from the worshipper, and restore him, on various occasions, to his theocratic standing which he had forfeited by legal defilement or sin. Its powerless ness to take away sin was evinced by its repetition (Heb. x. 1, etc.) Its full significance, therefore, is not perceived till it is viewed in its TYPICAL refer ence to Christ, who came to ' put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.' This reference is distinctly unfolded in the N. T., especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The sin-offering, particularly, typi fied Christ, who was made sin, eykuprla, for us' (2 Cor. v. 21); who bare our sins in his own body on the tree' (I Pet. ii. 24) ; and who, having done so, appears holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners' (Heb. vii. 26) ; whose flesh is meat indeed,'—food for the holy priesthood (John vi. 55, 56). The trespass-offering typified Christ, who restored that which he took not away' (Ps. lxix. 5), making compensation for the injury done by sin to God and his law. The burnt-offering had its fullest significance illustrated in Him, whose life was one continuous act of self-consecration to God, culmi nating, only, in his death. The peace-offering finds its full significance in Him who made peace through the blood of his cross, when God was in Christ re conciling the world unto himself; for while the death of Jesus was, in one aspect of it, a sin-offer ing condemning (Rom. viii. 3) and atoning for sin, in another aspect it was the expression of heaven's purposes of peace and good-will towards men. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is the bridge between the sacrifices of the law and the sacrifice of Christ ; the Epistle to the Hebrews, the full exposi tion of the nature, relations, and bearings of both. (Outram's Two Dissertations on Sacrifices, trans lated by Allen ; Magee's Discourses and Disserta tions on Atonement and Sacrifice; Lightfoot's Temple Service, ch. 8; Othonis, Lex. Rub. Phil., art. Sacrificia ; Jahn's Hebrew Antiquities, ch. v., sec.
273, etc. ; Hengstenberg's Sacrifices of Holy Scrip ture, appended to his Corn. on Eccles. in the For. Theol. Lib. ; Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of the O. Test. ; Tholuck's Dissertation on the O. T. in the New; Winer's Realworterbuch, Opfer; Dr. J. P. Smith's Sacrce and Priesthood of Christ. For a full list of German works on the subject, see Kurtz.)—I. J.