Lectures on the Day of Atonement.

Leviticus 16

With an appendix on the chief errors recently current on Atonement,

by W. Kelly.

LECTURE 1.

LEVITICUS 16: 1-4.

Its General Principle compared with Christ's Work.

I wish to present the principle of atonement, and have, therefore, taken the preliminary verses of Lev. 16, which introduce the Day of Atonement. It is only an introduction to the subject; but in the course of these discourses, proofs will appear from this type that God not only had all before His mind (as every one that knows Him must feel) but has been pleased to unroll it before us. In the most marvellous manner He contrived, with a wisdom that bespeaks itself divine, to furnish an earthly people with ceremonies which insisted on provisional sacrifices, and cleansing for the defilements of their outward conduct (or what is called "the purifying of the flesh"). But in these self-same rites grace and truth lay hidden till the light of Christ should shine on them and reveal, if not the very image, the shadows of good things to come; some already fulfilled, some not even yet but no less assuredly to be, according to the word and purpose of God.

Inasmuch, then, as even this chapter can generally testify, God has plans which have not yet been carried out to the full, we may see what is true of Scripture, that it is prophetic. And is there anything that brings out God more than the fact that His word is prophetic? Prophecy is a more enduring and deeper witness than miracle. A sign or a miracle no doubt is a display, while the world goes on as usual, of God's active power; but prophecy gives living proof of His mind. None but a low-minded or thoughtless man could suppose that power is equal to mind. And there is more than mind in it: moral light is conveyed, the maintenance, as well as the making known, of God's character and will, which is evidently far beyond not matter only but mind. As the greatest of Frenchmen said, the least mind is superior to all matter, whilst all mind is below charity or divine love.

Here we find the true source of atonement: the love of God provided it in a way that should conciliate grace and righteousness, guilty man and a holy God Who thus, and thus only, causes mercy to glory against judgment. No where is God so highly exalted, nowhere man so truly humbled. What speaks so profoundly of sin as the blood of Christ? But it is applied to our utter unworthiness, it is brought in for the very purpose of meeting man as he is, and of bringing him out of all his iniquities to God as God is. For such, and nothing less, is the design of atonement. Divine righteousness, based on Christ's work, is its character, when man was proved unrighteous; and as it was according to grace, so is it of faith, and thus open to every believer.

But the Day of Atonement necessarily had a temporal and imperfect character; "the law made nothing perfect." It was, beyond question, the most solemn act in the whole Jewish year; but the fact of its renewal every year was conclusive evidence, as the Epistle to the Hebrews declares, of its inefficacy for conscience as well as for God in view of eternity. It was therefore provisional, as all the institutions of the law were. Is this any impeachment of God's law? It is His own word that pronounces it. If so, you will allow God to be a better judge than you are, or I, or all men. If God declares that the law made nothing perfect — and such is His expressed and irrevocable sentence (Heb. 7: 19) — who with the least reverence for God can question it for a moment? Therefore the provisional atonement year by year for Israel on its face had what did not rise up to the perfection of God's nature, character, and mind. At best it could be but a shadow of the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ.

One can understand readily that, only when a perfect being comes, can the result be in perfection. Adam was an admirable creature no doubt, if we believe the scriptures, as an innocent man on an unfallen earth. Nevertheless, on the plain surface of facts, the first thing recorded of him when tried is that he sins. There must be perpetual and violent effort to escape the moral inference; honest denial of man's sin there cannot be. The overwhelming fact is out from the beginning. Is it to be tolerated or ignored because it is universal?

At once God brings in the token of a bruised Bruiser of the serpent, the woman's Seed. This ere long decided the difference between the two sons of Adam. "The Lord had respect to Abel and to his offering." Why to Abel rather than to Cain? Because "by faith" Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice. Faith submits to, and receives, and rests on, the word of God. It was not the mere matter of fact or feeling; nor did it turn on which of the two brought the largest or more valuable offering. "By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." What made it so? In Cain there was no more than natural religion, as he took no account of sin; he offered in duty to Jehovah of the fruit of the ground — the ground under the curse. It was the expression of unbelieving homage, with total insensibility to sin on one side and to grace on the other. Faith always confesses sin in man, as it more or less counts on grace in God. Whatever be the sin of man, the grace of God is beyond it. One of the workings of unbelief is despair, another the bolder form of rebellion against God in the open rejection of His word. But the soul may not be so impious and yet be as really guilty by doubting grace in God to forgive its sin, however heinous. Faith, seeing Christ and hearing the Gospel, owns the sin truly, but reckons on the mercy God reveals.

Man's device ever fails to cover his evil. God clothed guilty Adam and Eve with coats of skins. It was a provision which, in presence of sin, spoke of death, yet of mercy to man through death. This, without God's word, would never have entered the human mind. Naturally, for that matter, Cain's was a much more reasonable offering in appearance. For what man, as man is, however intelligent, would have thought of a sacrifice as acceptable to God? It was exactly what Abel brought "of the firstlings of the flock, and the fat thereof." If slain beasts furnished the clothing which God gave his parents, Abel slays a lamb in sacrifice to God. It was an offering in faith; access to God for a sinner can only be through death. That behind it all there was more and what was deeper than Abel or any saint of old knew, is true. One does not say that Abel contemplated the sacrifice of the woman's Seed; but it was in God's mind, and faith reaped the blessing. Therefore Abel was attested as righteous, "God bearing witness to his gifts, and by it, being dead, he yet speaketh." Abel looked for the One Who should crush the power of evil here below; and against and above nature he, by faith, offered sacrifice to God with the expression of its excellency in "tine fat." But God blesses according to whet He sees in the sacrifice: a principle which plainly came out later in the blood of the paschal lamb (Ex. 12: 13).

No doubt all the believers throughout the Old Testament looked for the Kinsman-Redeemer, as we may see in the assurance of Job (Job 19: 25, 26), the destroyer of death and of him that has the power of death. They did not question that in due time the Messiah would meet both God and man perfectly; but to suppose that they understood how it was to be done is going beyond scripture. Not even the disciples in the days of our Lord could have put the two things intelligently together. Did not Christ's personal envoys, who accompanied the Master from John's baptism till the ascension — did not the apostles know as much as their predecessors? To doubt this would be doing anything but honour to the teaching of Jehovah's righteous Servant (Isa. 53: 11). His enemies being judges, "never man spake like this man"; and never did men on earth receive such a course of holy and perfect instruction as the twelve from the Son of God.

The grand question then is, not what the saints under the Old Testament understood, but what God set up and what its bearing is on the atonement, now that Christ has come and finished the work given Him to do. The true meaning of the atonement is in question, and here the New Testament alone comes conclusively to our aid. What can be conceived clearer than the divine comment given in the Epistle to the Hebrews (or Christian Jews), who needed it, as they ought to have appreciated it best? We sometimes hear of commentaries and commentators, and the best men show both prepossessions and prejudices. It is a pity that they do not use the Epistle to the Hebrews a little more and to better purpose. There is the greatest of all commentaries, and the one most immediately bearing on this very truth with which we are now occupied. Not only does the inspired text lie in the chapter before us, but also the inspired exegesis in the New Testament. No one can doubt this who reads Hebrews 9. And what does it let us know? That Aaron, the high priest, represents Christ, and that the work He wrought was for no transient purpose but "eternal redemption."

Of old there were carnal ordinances imposed till a time of reformation; but Christ being come High Priest of good things to come, by the better and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands (that is, not of this creation), nor by blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood entered in once for all into the holies, having found (or obtained) an eternal redemption. His sacrifice is, in the strictest sense, of everlasting efficacy. That word "eternal" occurs frequently with peculiar stress in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Why eternal? In contrast with the temporal character of what was akin among the sons of Israel. Thus we find, beside eternal redemption, eternal salvation, eternal inheritance, everlasting or eternal covenant: all of which words have a pointed reference, when understood, to lift the believing Hebrews above what was but temporal. Christ, dead, risen, and in heaven, puts the believer face to face with the unseen and eternal. Just because as Jews they were accustomed to God's government of man on earth, their eyes needed to be raised above so as to see within the veil what can never pass away. If the Christian Jews slipped into their old thoughts, they would lower fatally the character of the gospel, as they are warned in chapter 6 and elsewhere.

Nor did those Hebrews only need this, but we do also. The inspired word has the unceasing authority of God, and the deepest value for us all who believe. What God intended by it is that you should rise above the clouds of tumult and difficulty, especially during these changeful periods through which we are passing; and that you should be established in the certainty of a new, everlasting, and heavenly relationship to God, even now, through the atonement of our Lord Jesus.

The Day of Atonement provided for all the sins, transgressions, and iniquities of the children of Israel. What had the work of Christ in view? Not only the entire, present, and everlasting removal of all our iniquities from the conscience, but the glorifying God Himself even about sin by the virtue of Christ's atoning death. Such is the need; and nothing less can avail. God most assuredly will never slight the value of the sufferings of His Son, nor forget that He is indebted to His cross for perfectly glorifying Himself; yet even if we take a lower but true ground, what is the value of an atonement which could fall short of a single sin? Supposing such a scheme possible as a man forgiven 999 sins, but not the 1000th, he is as ill off as if he had none; for by that one unforgiven sin he is absolutely unfit for the presence of God: no sin can enter there; and if we have not our portion on high, where must we be found?

Further, atonement contemplates far more than the need when we die or appear before the judgment seat of Christ. It will be admitted by the reader of Lev. 16, that a Jew rightly looked for the effectual application of that day's sacrifice to his then wants, to his actual sins, to the iniquities that burdened his spirit, and that filled him with apprehension of judgment. But the effect was only for the time. What, then, has the coming of our Lord done? Has it not brought life, love, and light into the world? It has revealed God in the divine person of His own Son, yet a man, Who suffered for sins once, just for unjust, that He might bring us to God. To the believer this is soul-salvation, as the saving of the body awaits Christ's coming again. Apart from sin will He appear a second time.

There were certain imperfections allowed of old, as nobody can deny. Our Lord has ruled that it is so "because (or in view) of the hardness of their hearts." We find David, Solomon, etc., doing things that no Christian would think of. How comes it then, that licences, which notoriously existed under the law, are now intolerable? Because Christ is come, "the true light now shineth." No doubt man put it out, as far as he could; but he has not got rid of it. The rejected Christ is in heaven; but the light, far from being withdrawn, shines more brightly than ever. The First Epistle of John is careful to affirm that the darkness is passing away, and that the true light already shineth. When He was on the earth, the darkness comprehended it not, though shining in the darkness (John 1: 5). Now that He is in heaven the darkness passes away. It is not exactly true that it "is passed away"; the A.V. is therein too strong. But if not absolutely passed away, it is passing away as each believer receives the light. Now that we have Christ and in Him redemption, he who receives the light is made light in the Lord; and every one in whom Christ is not only the light but the life, is cleansed by His blood, and freed from sin, to live unto God.

What is the effect of redemption even outwardly? That men are ashamed now of what, before Christ came, was thought nothing but natural, if not right. Few know, on the one hand, how much is due to the light of Christ in the gospel exposing all and so deterring men from their audacious and immeasurable iniquities. For that very reason, on the other hand, the sins of every one, whose conscience is awakened by the word, become before God, hateful and even appalling. The first effect of the light of God in Christ is to make the evil appear worse than ever. Hence it is that, wherever the word of God deals vitally with the soul, repentance towards God ensues, though faith alone gives repentance its divine character. So the soul has no comfort yet; there can be no real rest, nor even relief. Till redemption is known, the burden becomes through the Holy Spirit's action more and more oppressive; and thank God for it! What more dangerous than to slur over our sins because the grace of Christ is preached? Nor does anything more enfeeble the soul afterwards than bounding, if one may say so, over the grave of our sins, instead of looking down steadily there to judge ourselves for what we are. A man otherwise is startled perhaps to find, another day, the evil which he at first passed over too lightly; he may thus begin to question whether such a one as he can really have, as he calls it, an interest in Christ and His grace. Had he at the start faced his own evil, he had known better, not only what he himself is, but how the Saviour has taken it all up and blotted out every sin with His precious blood.

According to the plain testimony of the New Testament, then, Christ's coming has brought sin out in its full opposition to God, in its evil against man, and in all its secret depths, as never was known before. No doubt the law acted in an admirable manner; for the commandment is holy, jest, and good. But after all, the law is not Christ, and Christ revealed God in His grace, instead of merely giving what appealed to fallen man. Yet you can see in the law that God had before Him the state of man as he is. At Sinai He commanded ''Thou shalt not do this evil; thou shalt not do that." It could be of no use to claim from the sons of Israel what was only to be found in Christ. What the law did was just what man then needed — to put a check upon the evil that was there, to condemn what the evil heart had a desire for. Man was already a sinner before the law was given. No doubt Adam innocent had a law; but this is a very different thing from the law, which supposes that man is fallen, and that he has a constant inclination to do the various wicked things prohibited and denounced by it. Along with that law of God, and forming the most solemn institution connected with it, was the Day of Atonement, among other provisions of good things to come.

But now that Christ is come, He has brought in an incomparably deeper and larger standard of sin. He has made, therefore, the discovery of the evil and wretched condition of man beyond comparison more complete and profound. No wonder that the Holy Spirit uses grand words, for none less could set forth truly the character of what is revealed to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The law claimed man's works. Christ did in the highest sense the work of God. "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." Atonement is God Himself, by and in Christ, taking up and settling the question of sin, in His own grace, for His own glory, that believers might be fully blessed. Present association with heaven is in full view, because one immediate object was to wean the Hebrews from yearning after earthly hopes. Yet the future is not forgotten: for the Christian it is unmistakeably "eternal," whatever the accomplishment of earthly promises by and by. But there is more to heed than this. There is a present enjoyment in the Spirit's power of that eternal character. It has for its object to bring the believer now, with purged conscience, into God's presence, or, as Peter puts it, "to bring us to God," as He is and will be known in the light for ever.

Just think what a blessed reality this is, and whether you have or have not made it yours! The Lord intimates it even in the Gospel. The prodigal son comes not merely to himself, but to the father; and the father meets him, with affection indeed, but with a vast deal more. He has the best robe put upon him, not when he deserved it (for this never could be), but before there was the smallest question of aught save his repentant sense of sin and of his father's love. It is God acting from and for what He is Himself, and for what He can righteously afford to do through the redemption that is in Christ to the worst of sinners. Such and so efficacious is His love displayed in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus.

Alas! even those who love His name do ignorantly put off the feast which the Father would have us enjoy here till we get to heaven. They think that such joy and gladness cannot be known in the midst of earthly sorrow, and that the gathering together for rejoicing must await the closing heavenly scene "for ever with the Lord." But they unwittingly do God's grace great injustice, and defraud themselves now of exceeding joy in the Spirit. They practically lose the sweetness and the power of His joy which is their strength even here. It is not only that the once guilty son comes to his father, and that the father runs and meets the son in nothing but love, without a reproach, so much the more to produce self-reproach (oh! the immense loss for the soul that but slightly judges self before God); but along with this there is the conscious fitting him for the presence of his father in enjoyed communion.

The best robe is put upon him. Never bad he worn such a robe, before levity and self-will induced him to abandon his father's house. Even Adam had not the beauteous robe of Christ when he walked upright in the garden of Eden. Redemption is no mere reinstating of fallen man, as it is sometimes perversely called; it takes away his nakedness, and clothes him with Christ, whiter than snow in His blood. Nothing less does the Saviour undertake than to fit for the Father's presence. It is no question, therefore, of bringing back to the condition of innocence, but of the Last Adam. Grace reigns through righteousness. Christ provides and gives the tone to all who believe. God the Father is the source; Christ the means and channel of love; the Holy Spirit takes His blessed part in making the word that reveals all, living and effectual in the soul. The robe, therefore, must be the best robe. The calf must be the fatted calf. The shoes, the ring, the feast, each and all are in accordance with Christ's person and with His work. And so, lastly, and above all, there is the communion of joy; for the God of all grace must have His own deep satisfaction in the feast, as indeed nothing could be holy, good, or lasting without Him.

Do Christians generally know what all this means? It is exactly what God intends to be made good now in Christianity. Let me hope you have now at least a little of that divine spring of communion in joy and liberty. No one doubts by and by the fulness of joy: then and there, of course, it will be for ever in all perfection. But it is a flagrant mistake that the scene the Lord describes should be confined and put off to heaven. Is it needed to demonstrate why not? In heaven there will be no elder son, nor will the father go out to entreat. There will be no such ungracious murmurers in heaven; alas! plenty now on earth. It is therefore to be realised now on earth, though all the springs of the joy are heavenly and divine.

Doubtless the reason why people relegate it to the heavens is, because they are not in the secret of its joy themselves; and there is a sort of reluctance in the hearts even of righteous men that others should have what they know not themselves. Ah! let the lack rather awaken an earnest searching of heart to enquire, "How is it that my soul is not in the love, joy, and liberty the Lord describes? That I have not realised yet the best robe, or the fatted calf? How that I have overlooked the communion of God's own joy in love with His own?" "The Son of Man is come to save that which was lost;" but by that work God was glorified in Him, as God at once glorified Him in Himself, and would have us now to taste its fruit.

Forgiving is not all the gospel tells out; nor should it be all for us to know or make known remission of sins. God's object is not, and could not be, less than to bring us to the knowledge of the Father and the Son, into the joy and liberty of grace now, while we wait for the glory of God in the hope of which we exult. In this knowledge of our God and Father lies the most effectual power against the worldly snares that encumber us on every side. It is never the gospel order to make us holy in order to be happy before God; an effort often made, but always made in vain. In order to be holy in practice, grace makes you happy first. He Who alone was the Holy One died for you in your unholiness and evil, in order to make you happy through faith in Him. By His death Christ deserved it for you, and the grace of God righteously blesses you in the faith of Him. And this is exactly in unison with God's heart and mind and word; for His word was written for us that we, believing, might share His joy in love.

Have we wandered from the text and the commentary? From neither. Lev. 16 held up the picture of atonement. Hebrews 9 declares that, as Christ is come and His blood shed atoningly, blessing is now for faith, and is eternal: What was forbidden to Aaron save a little one day in the year, is now vouchsafed always to every Christian. "The way into the holies hath not yet been made manifest" is what God said of Israel. But in Hebrews 10: 19, it is written for the Christian, "Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holies by the blood of Jesus, a new and living way which He dedicated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a great priest over the house of God, let us approach in full assurance of faith," etc. We are ever welcome there and thus.

But there is another blessed fruit of Christ's work. His blood is equally efficacious in purging our conscience from dead works to serve (or worship) the living God (Heb. 9: 14). The two privileges go together. If the way is made manifest into the sanctuary, we are also made free of it. Christ's own are welcomed to draw near now, but only as purged in conscience, not only from bad but from dead works, to serve a living God. How great the superiority of our privilege over Israel, and Aaron's sons, yea, over Aaron himself! It is not only that the way is open, and the sins are borne; but the conscience is purified by the same blood of Christ which did the rest. Thus the light of God makes only the clearer what Christ's blood has effected. Nothing there disturbs the conscience of the believer, who is set in love and liberty to serve the living God. Christ's work, which displaces the dead works of man, ever abides in unchanging value as our ground of acceptance. The same efficacious sacrifice of Christ has achieved these inestimable blessings as a whole. As long as the Jewish tabernacle had its standing, there was the remembrance of sins; not their remission for ever, but the conscience unpurged before God, and the barrier maintained between God and man. The blood of Christ has changed all for us who believe. And no wonder. The. law had for its aim to shut up those under it, till faith came and the accomplishment of God's will by Christ set aside all the lifeless substitutes and vain efforts of man. Then man, purified from sins, and in his conscience, comes freely to God.

This nearness to God appeared distinctly after Christ's death; as the death of the sons of Aaron was the time to restrict even Aaron from God's presence. Why so? Because his sons had been guilty of presumptuous sin. God had caused His fire from heaven to consume the burnt sacrifice, and they had despised it and Him. They thought forsooth that any fire would do just as well: common fire would born incense no less than the fire of God. How ready man is to set at nought His favour, however rich! God had affixed the seal of divine approbation; but it only gave Nadab and Abihu the opportunity of proving their hearts to be wholly careless of His glory as well as of His grace. Jehovah had Himself in grace sent the fire from before Him to consume the burnt offering and the fat. Therefore it was for them to keep up that holy fire. But these two sons of Aaron profanely took common fire; and if God had passed it over, He would have been a consenting party to His own dishonour. Impossible! God judged them. They sinned unto death. It is not every sinner that thus sins unto death. There was then, there is now, sin unto death. It supposes sin in special circumstances to His dishonour. God had just brought in a peculiar work of grace, and in it was distinguishing Israel as His people; and immediately the two sons of Aaron put shame on His favour, and died for it.

How plain it was, even on the day of atonement, that God's chosen people could not draw near to God in the sanctuary! None but the high priest, — and even he — could enter the most holy place on this day alone in the year, for brief moments, and that with incense and with blood! What did all this indicate? That the way into the holies had not yet been made manifest. Now it is. How striking the contrast since the redemption that is in Christ Jesus! The way into the holies is made manifest. So, when Christ died, the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. No mark more significant. God taught plainly that the Levitical institution was gone, and that for faith a new thing was come on His part through Christ's death. This enters into the very core of Christianity. The way into the holies has been and is made manifest.

Are you, my brother, peacefully enjoying Christ thus? Are you in the present conscious possession of this nearness to God? What is the good of knowing that the way into the holies is manifested, if it is not for you to enter in by faith day by day, thereby appropriating the riches of God's grace toward you? It is now for every partaker of the heavenly calling. The veil that God rent was the death-warrant of Judaism. That man might outwardly repair; but it was only man without God. The veil was by no word of God erected again. For the Christian it is rent for ever, as is earthly sacrifice, altar, and priest; whereby is shown, by a divine token, the essential difference between Jewish atonement and that which the Christian has in virtue of Christ's death.

In the Jewish institution who can deny that the barrier abode impassable with the slightest exception even for Aaron. It did not matter whether it were a Samuel or a David, an Isaiah or a Daniel, there was no free entrance into the holies. The faith, or the holy character, of the high priest made no difference as to this. Jehovah appeared in the cloud upon the mercy seat, and even Aaron must not come in at all times within the veil, that he die not. On that day, once a year, a special sin offering was made; then only with the most scrupulous observance of God's injunctions could he approach to atone for himself, and his house, as well as for the people. The way there was otherwise closed.

What do we find in the birth and life of our blessed Lord Jesus? God came to man in the person of Christ. And what appeared in the Lord's death? That man, believing man, can now come boldly to God. The unbeliever is blind to both these matchless blessings. God came to man, believing or not; but unbelieving man rose up against Him, cast Him out, and crucified Him. Yet in that very cross of our Lord Jesus was this new and living way dedicated; so that he who believes in His name is free to draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith to God through the rent veil, with Christ as the great priest over the house of God. In fulfilment of the Levitical types our hearts are sprinkled from a wicked conscience, the body washed with pure water. The Christian has as an abiding settled reality what the Jewish had partially and only in form. The word of God has purified his heart by faith. There is but One Whose death has laid the basis for free access to God; and there it remains uncancelled, as it will, until the last believer in our Lord goes up to be with Him for ever. We shall all in person meet Him there whore our faith penetrates now. This is Christianity.

Are you, Christian, resting intelligently on Christ's work of atonement? It is admitted that there is more in Him than what we read in the Hebrews. Thus, you cannot believe in Christ without receiving life in His name. The believer requires divine life, in order to have affections according to God, — affections that hate evil and love what is good. Christ is life eternal to every one who believes in Him. He is their life, just as Adam was the head of natural life to mankind at large; and it is well to remark that Adam only became that head and source of life practically when he was a sinner. So Christ becomes the giver of life everlasting after His work of obedience unto death was complete. Righteousness was an accomplished fact, God being glorified in Him to the uttermost.

Christ therefore stands in blessed contrast with Adam. When He rose from the dead, the Lord breathed on His disciples the breath of new life in resurrection power, the distinctive life of the Christian. But this is no more the topic of the Epistle to the Hebrews, than the baptism of the Spirit which forms Christ's body; yet, any one can see the two things were necessary, not His death only, but the life which He is and gives to us, to which we may add union with Him, the membership of His body. What congruity would there be, if we could conceive the blessed life of Christ given to a man left struggling against his unremoved sins? How suitable that the risen life should be, where the sins are blotted out by His blood! The two blessings of grace are absolutely necessary, and both are by faith given, if one is, to man.

Christ, received by faith, secures the believer in all God gives. What a mercy that the gifts of grace should be thus united! For they are given to the simplest through faith in Christ; even to one that could not read or write, to a poor old man or woman, to a little child, if there be the Spirit of God producing subjection of heart to Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Do you ask, Will it last? The answer is, To all eternity; for "Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever."

For a Jew there was a round of daily, monthly, yearly, and occasional sacrifices. But one of the characteristic features of Christianity is this, there is one offering, and one only, the antitype that answers to all, but infinitely more than all. Creature sacrifices could be nothing but shadows, Christ's work is the divine reality. In the sacrifice of Christ God brings in what He could rest in, a perfection which could not be in the probationary plan of Old Testament times. Christ not only made the need of this perfection to be felt, but He alone supplied it to God's glory and man's blessedness. And the Holy Ghost is sent personally from heaven to bring in the joy and power of it all into the heart, ways, worship, and service.

He that receives the gospel is entitled to receive the blessing at once. At least, whatever hindrance exists, it may be from human activity of mind, or perhaps from morbid feeling; it is not God that delays the soul. As to these difficulties, the Lord is patient and tender, but there is no difficulty on His side; it is purely and solely on the part of him that ill hears the word. Old habits or thoughts, or? it may be will, working one way and another, — these things may cause delay; but He is faithful and unfailing.

See the beautiful instance of the Syro-Phoenician woman. The Lord was ready for her call as soon as she came; but was she yet ready for the Lord? She had not considered how far off she was; but the Lord brought her down to this point. He was not sent save for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. When her cry became simpler, as one that needed His help, He threw out the hint that it was not meet to cast the children's bread to the dogs. The light shone into her soul now brought truly low, and she sees the need of grace in a moment. Correcting through His word her mistake, she no longer takes the position of being one of the sheep, but owns her self a poor dog. She had no claim, she falls back on sovereign grace, and finds far more than she had sought; not indeed a lost sheep of the house of Israel, she becomes a saved sheep of the Lord Jesus for ever. Here was a case for, not a miracle like her daughter's, but the Saviour come to atone for sins. God would justify all the forbearance He had shown in the past, but He was now bringing to view deeper counsels and ways than man had learnt or could learn before.

Hence it is that the gospel does not merely set forth God vindicated in the cross of Christ, or, according to the language of the theologians, "His satisfaction." Surely that God is glorified says a great deal more. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him." This is not merely legal or penal satisfaction. Even a man may be satisfied when he gets what he wants; but God, we know, was glorified in Christ's death; and why? Because He took in all the reality, depth, and compass of Christ's work in redemption. All that is in God and man thereby was met and displayed perfectly; majesty and humiliation, grace and righteousness, holiness and suffering for sin, obedience and moral glory. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him." God as such was glorified in the rejected Christ, the humbled crucified Son of man. Every attribute of the divine nature, and every declaration of His word shine in the cross to God's glory; and therefore did God at once set the risen Son of man, not on the throne of David, but at His right hand on His own throne.

Throughout Christ's life and service previously the Father had been glorified in the unswerving obedience of the Son, at all cost and in all circumstances. Why is it that we now hear of "God" being glorified rather than "the Father?" Because sin brings forward "God" as the judge of sin; as sin affects man's conscience and compels him to think of God. For, spite of man's bad habits and hardness, God makes himself felt in the conscience of a sinner, who ordinarily quails at the thought of death or judgment. But if conscience will be heard about sin, what did God feel about the self-sacrificing work of the Lord Jesus under His own judgment of sin, and on behalf of sinners? God is glorified even about sin, by the perfection of Christ's enduring all its consequences at God's hand; and what is the effect of it all? If God was thus, and only thus, glorified, as He could have been by none other person and in no other way, how does He testify His sense of the worth of His Son's atoning death?

It would have been wholly beneath that worth to have accomplished the Old Testament prophecies for earth and the earthly people, even if willing. The cross proclaimed mankind evil and lost, most of all Israel; and God takes the Son of man "straightway" into His own glory on high as the only adequate answer to the cross. (Ps. 8, 110.)

The holy hill of Zion is not holy or high enough for the Son of man. The "decree" (Ps. 2) He declared for it will be assuredly fulfilled another day. But what has God done now? He has set the risen Lord at His own right hand. Man in His person is exalted, and shares the throne of God; the Old and the New Testaments declare it. There had been many kings sitting on David's throne; and, God will bestow more abundant dignity and honour on that throne when Christ deigns to sit on it, and asks for and receives the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. Bat this will be the future kingdom; it is not Christianity.

Christianity is founded on Christ dead, risen, and glorified by God's will, as it sheds on the believer the light of heavenly grace and glory in Christ, and puts the soul into living relationship with God the Father on the ground of redemption, according to the efficacy of Christ's blood which shall abide for ever. Beloved brethren, let us only learn better our own Christianity. How much more should we then know Christ, and estimate His work!

Into the details of this chapter succeeding lectures will enter. What is now set out may serve to bring out the general idea distinctly, and prove the marked contrast of the gospel with the temporary, temporal, and earthly character of Jewish atonement, which too many accept as its measure. The death of Aaron's profane sons was the occasion of declaring man's unfitness to draw near before Jehovah; even Aaron must not approach at all times within the veil, on pain of death (ver. 1, 2). Aaron must come with a young bullock or calf for a sin offering. He had to bring a ram also for a burnt offering (ver. 3). Aaron had to put on the holy linen coat, to have the linen breeches upon his flesh, to be girded with the linen girdle, and to be attired with the linen mitre or turban; also must bathe his flesh in water before putting them on (ver. 4). All this spoke of intrinsic imperfection and uncleanness. He was as he stood in no degree meet for access to God; and when he did get there, it was through incense and blood.

The high priest appears, not clad in his official robes (he does not wear them until the peculiar work of atonement is accomplished). He is here in the garb that spoke of unsullied righteousness, the holy garments. This was not his proper apparel. The high priest was distinguished by a rich dress, wherein ornaments of gold and jewels had their place. But the holy "linen garments" were worn for the special work of this day.

We may here observe that this very exceptional appearance of the high priest on the Day of Atonement seems to help us in understanding a verse that has been a source of perplexity to many men otherwise well versed in the Word of God. It is written in Heb. 2: 17, "Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in all things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." To reconcile sinners is exactly what the gospel undertakes to do; but to reconcile "sins" is an unhappy expression. God will never be reconciled to sins, nor would God ever have us to be reconciled to sins. "To make reconciliation for sins," therefore, is one of those verbal oversights that we find occasionally even in the admirable Authorised Version. The Scriptural phraseology for "reconciliation" is altogether different from "atonement."

In Rom. 5: 11, as is commonly known, it should be the reconciliation, not "the atonement;" in Heb. 2: 17 it should be not "reconciliation," but propitiation or expiation. Atonement is as to sin expiation, as to God propitiation. God is offended at sin, justly indignant at that which is a direct violation of His will and nature in man, who dares to resist His authority and His commands. Atonement is God's intervention, in His grace, righteously to expiate the sins and set free the guilty; and therefore atonement is the sole way in which God righteously brings the sinner into reconciliation with Himself. Therein God is as truly glorified as the repentant sinner is brought nigh to God. By that work the face of God becomes propitious to the sinner, so that his sins being judged are sent away never to be found again. Thus the evident force of the verse in Hebrews is, "to make atonement, or expiation, for the sins of the people."

But here is where some find difficulty — "A merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to propitiate (or make atonement) for the sins of the people." The High Priest is not in His official status on high till after the sacrifice is made. The proper sphere of the High Priest is heaven, and not earth. Nevertheless, nothing is more certain than that Christ was, and must be, this faithful and merciful High Priest, "to make expiation, or atonement, for the sins of the people," in "the death of the cross," "through the blood of His cross." Here it was He died, lifted up from the earth no doubt, yet not in heaven; though the virtue of that blood was at once infinitely felt there, in figure upon the mercy seat and before it. Can one conceive a more admirable shadow than what God has given to put these two things together? The high priest had to act that day in a manner not more necessary than most efficacious for making an expiation of sins; nevertheless, he was not yet arrayed in his official robes. Does not this singular circumstance on which much stress is laid tally with the facts of the case? The Lord entered on the proper functions of the High Priesthood, after He had been perfected through sufferings, when He went to heaven. But, before He went on high, the atoning sacrifice had been effected. "When He had made purification of sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb. 1: 3); nay, more, "With His own blood He entered into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9: 12). He obtained it neither on earth strictly, not yet in heaven. He was "lifted up" on the cross. There did God make sin Him Who knew no sin; but if atonement must be made for sin on the cross, its efficacy penetrated the holiest that very moment. "It is finished" said He Who had poured out His soul unto death. The blood was for God in the sanctuary, though for man's sin on the earth.

The reality far surpasses every part of the type. To this end was He "lifted up from the earth." Thus does He draw, not the children of Israel as such, but "all men''; for as the cross closed all hope for Israel of a living Messiah, everything for sinful man turned on a crucified Saviour. There He bore the judgment of sin, while the virtue of His blood instantly reached God in the holiest. Only after His ascension and sending down the Spirit was it preached to man on earth. It was the high priest alone who acted solely, not as ordinarily on high, but rather in the exceptional position of the one great representative in the judgment of sin before God for the heavenly family, and for the earthly people, not yet saluted of God as entered on His ordinary functions above. Does not this correspond with the holy linen dress worn for the special service of the high priest that day? Had it been the usual garments proper to His heavenly place, there had been more room for thinking of a fresh action of Christ in heaven, in order to make out a succession of stages historically answering to the various parts of the type. But even the type is plain enough that, before the high priest assumes his normal garments, he has to execute a work of the deepest moment, clad in a way altogether different from the regular dress of his office. It points to the Lord Jesus meeting completely what is here attributed to the high priest, Aaron, on the Day of Atonement, before He entered upon the ordinary functions of His priesthood. Aaron had not, Christ had, obtained eternal redemption when He entered the sanctuary. The truth has an immediate completeness and unity, which the type could not possess. "For the law made nothing perfect" (Heb. 7: 19). Aaron was immeasurably below the Saviour and His work.

Creature means availed but for the moment, as a witness to the acceptance personally and the efficacy of His blood for us on Christ's part. The offering of our Lord was final and complete. There is no question for us of sacrifice again. There is also in Him eternal life, and through His work eternal redemption. Thereby is the conscience perfectly purged from sin. If He has not purged it by His blood once shed, what can do it? Christ suffers and dies no more.

Do you object that one may go wrong in the course of the day — that one may fall into sin? For this there is divine provision which restores the soul, while humbling it in the cast by the remembrance of what the sin cost Christ. The soul bows to God under the sense of dishonour done to the grace of such a Saviour. The word of God is applied by the Spirit to rebuke and bring the soul into confession before God. "Washing of water by the word" is the remarkable figure of the apostle, answering to the water of separation from defilement in Num. 19. This goes on when needed; but why not the sacrifice? Because it remains absolutely perfect, yea perfecting; which its repetition would deny according to the argument in the Hebrews. Yet, has not something to be done? "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." But if the central truth before us now is, that Christ's infinite work of atonement, blotting out the believer's sins and cleansing his conscience, abides for ever before God, renewal is excluded because its efficacy is perfect. Such is the unqualified and unhesitating doctrine laid down by inspiration. From this sentence of God's word and Spirit there is no appeal.

We may have to enter into some interesting distinctions in the scriptures; but it will be shown that in every one of them the very image, the full truth of God, goes incomparably beyond the types. You must remember that a type, however instructive in analogy (sometimes a contrast, rather than a resemblance), is after all only the shadow, and not the full impress and expression of the truth.

LECTURE 2.

LEVITICUS 16: 5-10

Its General Principle compared with Christ's Work.

That which comes before us now is the distinction between the two goats. Everyone can see on the face of scripture that there is a very marked difference between them. It is vain for any one to suppose that God did not intend a definite truth to be taught by each. One may notice that they were decided by lot, the disposal being in the hand, therefore, of the Lord exclusively; and this was quite an exceptional thing. As a general rule, the choice of the victim, under certain expressed conditions, was ordinarily left to the offerer. In some cases there was no latitude whatever: a positive command was laid down that such or such an animal should be offered under given circumstances. In other cases there is a gracious consideration of the poor in the offering. Poverty is taken into account on the one hand, and ample means, with a large heart, had their full opportunity on the other side. But in this case all was prescribed, and specially decided by the Lord.

Two goats, no other animals, were demanded to be brought by the children of Israel. But even the high priest himself was not allowed to choose which of the goats should be Jehovah's lot, and which should be the people's. This was left absolutely in the hands of God. The reason may be that there is no offering in all the ritual of Israel that has so Godward a character as those that were presented on the great Day of Atonement. It was God dealing with sin; and He accordingly moves in the matter — God alone. The high priest himself is the only other that is permitted to appear. On other days he had the sons of his house; the subordinate priests took their suited part. On that day he acted, and he only. The bearing of these things on our Lord Jesus is manifest: propitiation was His work alone.

Jesus was the high priest, but as yet in an altogether exceptional position — a high priest not so much in what was intercessional, as for what was representative before God in sin-bearing. He was identifying himself thus with Israel, and not for the people only, but for the sons of Aaron as well as for himself. It is clear therefore that the place is altogether different from that which regularly became the high priest in the sanctuary of God. Intercession in no way fulfilled the type of this great day, but laying a righteous basis for it rather. It was not as a martyr, nor identification in sympathy, to which some would lower the atonement; neither was it any question only of moral government, still less a simple display of love or of absolute pardon. These features, perhaps, may in a just measure and true light be found in the death of our Lord. He was indeed the holiest of martyrs, and in this view beyond all in His death. And therein did He make good God's moral government, as it never was nor could be save in His own person, and under His own hands. His obedience in love was absolutely perfect. Yet had He been tempted as none other was. No temptation common to man had He been spared; but it is never said that the Lord was not tempted far beyond all. Suppose you that any man was tempted as the Lord during the forty days?

Possibly, nay, probably, the last three great trials of our Lord may be known in measure and spirit by not a few of His followers, and accordingly they present the only details of His temptation that are given us. But what do we know of what passed during the forty days? Why are there no details? Because none will ever be put in such a position again. A man may, on the one hand, imitate it in part as an impostor, and we may have heard of the like; on the other, we read of Moses sustained on high, and of Elijah going on earth in the strength of divinely supplied food. But oh! how different were even their holy fasts from His, Who alone resisted the enemy in the wilderness, with no companions except the wild beasts, till angels came to minister at the close! The Holy One of God triumphantly resisted, but in resisting suffered to the uttermost. Is this the case with what men call "temptation?" How sadly we know that we have too often yielded instead of resisting, and that we gratify ourselves because we do not suffer! We "enter into temptation," as Peter did, instead of watching and praying as we should. Our Lord "suffered being tempted." He kept the evil outside; yet the spiritual sensibilities of His holy nature were wrung by the temptation which Satan presented. But there was nothing within that answered to the temptation without; and Satan finding nothing in Him was completely foiled. Was that in vain? It was a part of the necessary fitting of our blessed Lord to be the sympathising High Priest. He had learnt obedience by the things which He suffered. Before He became man on earth' He knew what it was to command. He was now, albeit glorified in heaven, yet still man, able more tenderly and more powerfully to sympathise with the tried and tempted saints than if He had not so been here below. For we are not to suppose that the love is less because He is risen from the dead. We are indeed assured that He lives for ever to intercede for them. At the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens He is the channel of tender mercy and grace for seasonable help. His sympathy is ever flowing freely. and fully from above. Such is the way in which the Holy Spirit presents it in the Epistle to the Hebrews and elsewhere.

But on the Day of Atonement there was no question of sympathy, but of identification with sinful men in grace to bear the judgment of sin at God's hand. What is wanted for sin is not sympathy, but suffering for it. Not that, if any one sin, he is without a blessed resource; for we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And yet more, as a foundation, He is the propitiation for our sins. In this lay the answer to the deepest of all need. Sin had put shame on God, and done violence to His will, nature, and glory. God, therefore, must be vindicated in a]1 His ways and His nature about sin. He had been glorified as Father in the life here below of His Son, our Lord Jesus. There He had found the only man that perfectly and always met, not His every requirement only, but His mind and affection in an obedience and dependence that never quailed under sorrow and suffering. But a new question arose, not whether the Father found His joy in the perfect walk of His Son, a man in lowly dependence and obedience here below; but would this Holy One of God bear to be made sin? Would He bow His head under that intolerable burden? Would He, for God's glory, take up sin in all its enormity, in all its hatefulness, and in all its dread unutterable consequences to Himself? Would He give Himself up at all cost to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself?

The judgment of sin entails abandonment on God's part. Would He take and drink that cup? He that would suffer for sins could only undertake it, because in Him was no sin. A man tainted with the least sin must suffer for His own evils; it was therefore a condition indispensable for atonement that the victim should be without spot or blemish. Where was the man then who could suffer for sins without question of his own? Man had been challenged to convince Him of sin. God had borne witness of His complacency in Him. Jesus along could suffer atoningly; and this is what our Lord did, and what the high priest's action that day represented.

Doubtless no one type is quite sufficient to set forth our Lord. He was both the high priest who offered, and the victim that was offered. Scripture is perfectly plain in setting both forth in Him. The Epistle to the Hebrews, in the verse already referred to, incontrovertibly testifies the full truth; and one might almost equally refer to the witness borne by the First Epistle of St. John: "And He is the propitiation (ἱλασμὸς) for our sins" (1 John 2: 2; 1 John 4: 10). There we have the very word which describes the relation of our Lord to the day of atonement as the victim. More than this, Rom. 3 declares that God sot Him forth as "the propitiatory," or mercy-seat (ἱλαστήριον). No wonder scripture says that "Christ is all." Even this- expresses but part of what He is; but it is a rich and plain witness, and most conspicuously, that Christ was "all" in the essential and solemn transactions of the Day of Atonement. If we looked at other types, we should see that Christ is "all" in them also. But it is quite enough to occupy us now if we only look into this single part of the varied ceremonies on that unique day of interest for Israel.

Accordingly, then, the goat on which Jehovah's lot fell was beyond question to meet the exigencies of Jehovah's character. For this reason we find that the blood had always to be brought, not before man that needed its atoning virtue, but to God where He is. The same truth substantially appears on the paschal night. When the first passover was instituted, the blood was put, not within the door, but without. That precious blood was not for man to look on in order to extract comfort from his sight of it. Comfort, indeed, he was perfectly entitled to draw from it, but not by his looking at it. The blood was expressly and only outside the door; the Israelitish family was to be as expressly within. "When I see the blood, I will pass over," said the Lord; and Israel could eat the flesh in security, but not without bitter herbs.

So the true, deep, and all-important aspect of propitiation is ever that the blood is offered to God. No doubt it is for man; but the essential truth is, that it is put before God. Faith, therefore, acts on His estimate of the blood, not on man's. This is so true; that when the goat for Jehovah's lot comes forward, and the high priest deals with it, we have in this, the foundation of all for Israel, not a word said of laying his hands on its head, or of confessing Israel's sins. It is not affirmed that he did not — the Jews say that he did; but we need not mind what old Jewish tradition says, any more than what men say today. In scripture we have our lesson, and thus we have it from God, and thank God for it; and we know the value and safety of resting on what He says. Woe be to the man who attempts to speak for God without His word! The silence of God is to be respected in the next place to His utterance. What He deigns to speak, of course, has its own supreme place; but reverent faith binds us to abstain from filling up the blank that God leaves. We are assured that He perfectly knew and provided for all the wants of those for whom He meant His revelation. There we bow our heads and worship; there we are content to ask, "What does God intend by withholding what His people are so ready to speak for Him? "

Men may venture to say a great deal on what the high priest did; but it is remarkable that, although it was a fundamental provision for the children of Israel, not a word is breathed of the high priest laying his hands upon Jehovah's lot. This was an ordinary practice, as in the case of a burnt-offering that was killed, and a striking comfort for the offerer; but here silence reigns about it. Why? Is it inexplicable? In no way. Hands were laid on, where it was a question of man prominently. In an ordinary sin-offering it was the transfer of his confessed sin to the victim; in the burnt-offering, of the acceptance of the offering to the offerer.

Here Jehovah's glory is alone in view. His majesty had to be vindicated, and His moral nature. The clearance of the sinful people was graciously given and carried out to the full on the day of Atonement; but it was on Azazel, the second goat. The first goat is stamped throughout and indelibly with the truth, that not man, not Israel, but God's glory is primarily in question, and must be fully maintained. The first requirement for atonement is that God be glorified; there is nothing sure, stable, or righteous without this. It is not the mind of God in scripture when a creature's necessity, instead of God's moral glory, is allowed the first place.

The absence of confession over the first goat is no less marked, however quick man is to interpolate it. There was the most comprehensive and abject confession over the second goat, but not a word of the sort as to the first. Doubtless the reason is similar: confession is where man's sins are in full view. Confession is due to God, in order to give righteous comfort to man; it is the needed and just expression of self-judgment before God, that he may be forgiven. But there is, and must be, a deeper thing — that God's justice and honour be secured in atonement. There is Do adequate or holy basis without. meeting His glory or character: how and where is this scoured? In an offering for sin that speaks to Him of Christ, without reserve, devoted to His glory, not in life only, but in sacrificial death, giving Himself up absolutely to bear all the consequences of sin in God's unsparing judgment.

Man, though the object of compassion to the uttermost, here disappears. Christ, the sin-bearer, is alone before God. Man does not like either. The first man is all-important in his own eyes; and he becomes all the more sensitive when be is awakened to his need of forgiveness. He is slow to understand that everything should not be about himself. Man needs pardon urgently and profoundly: why should he not have the answer to his own grievous wants in the first goat? God has judged otherwise, and He is wise and holy. God has laid down what is due to His own glory in atonement as the first of all questions, in the clearest and most convincing way, except as to the infatuated persons who imagine that they can understand the things of God better than God Himself, and so are as ready to take from scripture as to add to it. Even in the shadow, not yet the very image, God anticipated and excluded all this vanity and pride. He has here attested to those who tremble at His word that, while the fulness of the blessing is designed for man, this cannot be but through what the first goat means, and not the second alone. Both must be heeded, and in God's order. There is no other way of blessing: the soul receives by faith and rejoices that God has been glorified in His Son. In order that it should be so, the race vanishes, and God deals with a representative in Aaron. In the anti-type it was Christ, the Son of man.

This was shown strikingly when the only occasion in which Scripture represents our Lord Jesus saying, "My God," was on the cross, until He said it in the resurrection. When He was here below, He always said "Father." He never acted, spoke, thought, save in the perfect communion of the Son with the Father. No wonder the Father was glorified in the Son. But now a total change came in, and the Lord prepares us for this, conveyed in that wondrous expression of His, already so often quoted: "Now is the Son of man glorified, and" — the Father? No! — "God is glorified in Him." That this is not casual appears beyond dispute from the words that follow: "If God" — not the Father as such, but God - "be glorified in Him, God shall glorify Him in Himself, and shall glorify Him straightway." Why? Because it was a question of the bearing of sin, and God as God is judge of sin, rather than the Father as such.

We all know that the theologians talk about our "reconciled Father" (and it is allowed they mean the truth of atonement, where all one's heart goes with them); but no man can justify such language from Scripture. It is God that needs atonement. Sin is hateful and intolerable to His nature. If it is expiated, it can only be through a divine and unsparing judgment of it. The Father brings in quite another range of facts and truths, thoughts and feelings. It is His gracious relation to the Son, and now by grace to the family of faith (for one does not here dwell on His more general Fatherhood that pertains to every creature). Hence this watchful discipline and holy chastening, as a father towards his children.

But, where the judgment of sin is concerned, all consideration of gracious relationship and its fruit is shut out entirely. God is the judge of sin, and there cannot be in this the least kindly mitigation. What sin deserves ought not to be impaired. Mercy is here wholly out of place. Sin must be punished duly: all must be out, and the truth, holiness, and righteousness of God be vindicated at all cost in the execution of the judgment of sin. In the cross of Christ not one ray of light from the Father broke the darkness that surrounded Him — Who knew no sin — made sin there for us. Never was His perfection so precious in God's eyes as when bearing our sins He cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" But it was the time for dealing with all evil laid on Him, not for the enjoyment or expression of communion.

This may enable the believer to see how complete was the change of our Lord's position on the cross. Was He not the eternal Son? This was unalterable. He could no more cease to be the Son in the Father's bosom, than the Father could cease to be His Father. Had it been possible indeed, His atonement had been in vain for God or man; but He could not be otherwise. Was He not God Himself? He Who is God can never cease to be God; just as one that is a mere man can never become God. All such notions are the dreams of human vanity and profane folly. He Who had deigned to become man was now on the cross made sin. And Who made Him to be sin? God alone: man never thought of such a thing. God, the Judge of sin, gave His beloved Son that He might become man, not merely to exhibit perfect dependence and obedience as a man in all "the days of His flesh" in communion with the Father, but above all to suffer to the uttermost all that God could expend of His most solemn unsparing judgment of sin on the cross. Yet was it all one unbroken obedience.

Therefore it was that darkness supernatural surrounded our Lord so suffering at that moment. It was not that He ceased to be the Son: He said "Father" on the cross, not only before He exclaimed "My God," etc., but afterwards, as if expressly to show that the relationship never ceased for a moment. Notwithstanding, He then became the victim for sin; and it was no make-believe. He suffered once for sins, not merely once on a time, but once for all, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God. He had been a sufferer through His life in love and kindness and zeal for God. Now it was from God for sins, a new and wholly distinct suffering for Him, and on Christ's part only; for no other ever endured it. If anything be real since the world began, His sin-bearing was. As all had been true in the life of our Lord, so all must be and was equally so in His suffering and death for sin. How blessed for us! Yet, that the blessing might be as righteous as full, it was Jehovah's lot, and not for His people in the first place. Such is the unquestionable force of the first goat. Consequently, if one word could describe properly the distinctive principle of this first act, must we not say it is "propitiation"?

When we come to the second goat, the word is "substitution." In these two will be found some help towards any just appreciation of the Day of Atonement, and the truth which is so fully revealed in the New Testament. At the present time there is a very active body of men who pronounce themselves "thinkers," and would gladly deny both of these altogether, who wish to fritter all down to the manifestation of gracious feeling in our Lord, to a display of love in martyrdom, or to some kindred departure from God's dealing with sin in His cross. It is the old Socinian idea in a new shape on the part of men who shrink from professing to be Socinians.

All such theories are utterly short of, and opposed to, what was wrought by God in that work of our Lord Jesus. They even contradict the shadows set forth by the type. Yet the revealed truth of the New Testament alone gives the full light of God. A type is like a parable in this — that it never runs on all-fours. What is given in either is but a striking analogy (in the type contrast no less than resemblance) of some grand principle, but never the complete truth, or image, as it is called in Hebrews 10. For evidently, and of course, a type must be either human material, or lower than human, such as a goat, ox, ram, a pair of pigeons, or something of that kind. So a parable speaks of a sower, or a marriage feast; or any suitable comparison.

But these figures, being of a creature kind, are necessarily limited; what we have in our Lord Jesus is infinite, and therefore the necessity of an infinite revelation as the inspired key. Had our Lord Jesus been a hair's-breadth less God than the Father, He could not have been an adequate sacrifice for sins before God, the Judge of sins; neither else could He have declared God to man. Only God could and can perfectly meet what God requires. That the Son did this in man, and as man, was part of His perfection. Do you ask, "How can God meet God?" You can understand that a man can meet a man. If you argue that there is unity in the Godhead, it is granted; while it is affirmed that there are persons in the Godhead, even the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This shows the importance of the truth. He who allows no more in the Godhead than three aspects of one person is not a Christian, but a deceiver and an antichrist. He does not confess the fully revealed and true God, Whose is Godhead not in three aspects but in three Persons, so distinct that the Father could send the Son, and the Holy Ghost descend on that Son in the presence of the Father, and in the consciousness of the Son, as it was, indeed, before man also. Such is the early and immense fact recorded in the Gospels, the clear witness to "the Trinity." What sympathy can one have with those who, overlooking such a fact, stumble over the word? Why be so servile to the letter, and so anxious to get rid of a word because it is not in the Bible? The thing is in the Bible; the truth, not only open in the New Testament, but pervading (in a more veiled form, like the Old Testament in general) the Bible from the first chapter to the fait. You cannot now read the first chapter of Genesis intelligently without seeing that there are more persons than one in the Godhead. You cannot read the first verse of the first chapter without having a positive though gradual preparation for divulging it, at least after it was revealed.

Do you ask, how can this be? "In the beginning God created." It is notoriously true, that in the original Hebrew "God" stands in the plural, and naturally points to more than one person; yet "created" is in the singular. This is not found where it is a question of heathen gods, but only of the living God. When scripture speaks about the gods of the nations, the verb is plural. When scripture speaks about the true God, although the subject be in the plural, the verb is often in the singular. Cases like Gen. 20: 13, where the verb is also plural, prove that God (Elohim) was known to be a true plural. Could anything more truly answer to the unity of the nature and the plurality of the persons? It is allowed that none in the Old Testament could certainly see the three persons as revealed later: even the believer had to wait for the New Testament for full light and truth. But when it came in Christ and by the Spirit, the peculiar grammatical concord of God's names could not but strike those who heed every word of holy writ.

Under the law God was not yet manifested, but on the contrary bidden behind a veil and certain: God was dwelling, as He says, in the thick darkness. Is that the case now? When. God sent His own Son, it was no longer so, as St. John bears witness. Far from dwelling in the thick darkness, the true light came in His person. Then the darkness apprehended it not; but here it did shine when Christ was here, as it shone out through the rent veil when He died on the cross. All that lay concealed behind — incense, priests, shadows, offerings, sacrifices, as well as the tabernacle itself, with its different measures of access to God — all is closed for the letter in the death of Christ. The Levitical system is clean gone, that the spirit, the truth couched under it all, and more still, might be known clearly. In the birth of Christ God had come to man; but now, in His death, the way lay open for man to come to God; and this the believer sees and knows to be the very essence and distinctive privilege of the gospel. For it is the unmistakeable truth of Christ that God did come to man in the person of His Son (Emmanuel); but the revealed effect of the atoning work of Christ is that the way is now made manifest into the holies. The veil of the temple was then rest from the top to the bottom.

If the striking type of the Day of Atonement falls short of the truth, assuredly it gives no small witness to the truth. Even the blood of the first goat was carried into the holiest of all. It was no emblem of carrying in blood after Christ died on the cross, as the letter would say. Carrying Christ's blood! The literal idea is indeed offensive. There was no other Jewish way, of course, but to carry in the blood then shed, and there was no other person than the high priest to carry it in. But to imagine that Jesus should have to do some subsequent act in order to make His blood available before the throne in the heavens is a strange doctrine. The truth is, that the moment the blood was shed, the effect of His atonement was infinitely felt above, before He entered there as the great High Priest in person. The veil of the temple was rent — not from the bottom to the top, as if it were by an earthquake or any influence from below; it was from the top to the bottom. It was God, Who was glorified in Christ's work of propitiation. It was God, Who signified the consequences of that expiation in His own eyes even then, as He afterwards caused the blessed result to be proclaimed in the gospel.

For, suppose that a Jew had looked in through the rent veil, what would be seen there? Never was it allowed before; no priest even could enter; but when the veil was rent, what was there to see? The blood upon the mercy seat. The blood once sprinkled "upon" the mercy seat was enough for God. But man requires the utmost means to assure him, and God graciously vouchsafes it: seven times the blood was sprinkled "before" the mercy seat, to give complete evidence for man that he may safely and surely draw near to God. For God it was simply put upon it. It represented the atoning blood of His Son, Who had so surely taken the place of the victim for sin, that He cried out from the cross, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? "

Alas! for those who misuse those wondrous words of the Atoning Victim, as an excuse for their own unbelief, and dare to compare their darkness with His. It is false that God ever forsook His saints. Is such unbelief excusable? Assuredly it supposes the densest ignorance of the gospel. But it is also the grossest irreverence to compare your "hours of darkness"* with that which shrouded the Sin-bearer then, and then only. Search the New Testament through, and the Old too, and you will never find an excuse for the darkness of doubting. I do not say that he who torments his soul with fears may not be a believer; but he is a believer who does dishonour to his faith by his unfaithfulness inwardly if not outwardly. Can you conceive that God gave His word for you to hesitate? Or do you think that the doubt of a child of God is not worse and more shameful than that of an unbelieving man?

*"If the Master," wrote Bishop Horne, "thus underwent the trial of a spiritual desertion, why doth the disciple think it strange, unless the light of heaven shine continually on his tabernacle? Let us comfort ourselves in such circumstances with the thought that we are thereby!! conformed to the image of our dying Lord that sun which set in a cloud to arise without one." ( A Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Irving's edition, i. 223, 4, Glasgow, 1825). Their name is Legion who repeat the same error.

Look at things according to God; consider what doubting Him means; what an insult to His truth and love in Christ! Say not what the child pleads when it has done some bad or foolish thing, "Mother, I never meant it." Nobody charges the child with wicked intent. But why meddle with what she ought not to have touched? So it is with those who are but children in the faith and spiritual understanding, sadly ignorant of God and of themselves. It is for want of simple rest in His Son and His word. Has not God given us the most ample grounds on which we should confide in Him? What could match with the truth now before us — the Son of God after taking on Himself the full consequences of sin at the hand of God? Was it not that God might be glorified in the Son of man made sin? I put it now in its most abstract and absolute form; and what is the blessed result for the soul that bows to God in faith? Not only that the believer is saved by grace, but that the gospel can go out to every creature under heaven. What does the gospel declare as its ground and justification? That He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world (1 John 2: 2).

Do you observe that certain words, printed in the italics of the Authorised Version, are here left out? The reason is, because they ought never to have been in. They are not required for the sense in our idiom; nay, their insertion conveys a wrong meaning, and makes the version say what inspiration does not either here or anywhere else. It is no pleasure to make such a remark on the common English Version: they are the words of a friend, of one who, as a whole, values the plain English Bible beyond any other version in general use. But let God be true, Who did not write those words: indeed they are printed in a character to show that they are not in the original Greek. There is therefore a marked distinction between the two clauses. "He was the propitiation for our sins." Who are the "our"? The family of God, you will answer, as this is the ordinary "we" of scripture (not, as is known, the only "we" there, but beyond just doubt the prevailing usage). For "we," as a general rule, unless there be modifying circumstances clearly marked, regularly means the family of faith, as "we know," "we believe." Does everybody know or believe? Certainly not; but only the faithful, or Christians. So in that case Christ is "the propitiation for our sins." But is this all? He is, thank God, "also for the whole world" — not "for the [sins of the] whole world." If Christ had been the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, as He is for the sins of believers, the whole world would have been saved. If they were borne away, what would remain for judgment? It is not so. There is a weighty difference. What, then, is the preacher of the gospel entitled to say? There is eternal life in Christ, and there is redemption through His blood. He is life eternal, His work no less before God. But for whom is this work? For all that repent and believe the gospel. Not a hair's breadth more does God allow. There is the revealed reply in its simplicity and its distinction and its fulness. You are not entitled to tell an unbeliever, "Christ bore your sins in His own body on the tree:" when he believes, God's word assures him of it.

Scripture is most precise as to the difference between propitiation and substitution. We may have another opportunity of going into substitution with more detail when we come to a subsequent lecture; but for the present I am content just to indicate, in passing, the distinctive truth of each. Propitiation, as being Godward by the work of Christ, takes in not merely what God is towards His people, but what He is towards sinners, wherever and whatever they may be. Would you limit God, as the Jews did? He will not sanction it. The work of Christ's propitiation, being infinite before God, opens consequently the door to God's love in beseeching every creature on earth. Doubtless the type here or anywhere fails to set forth such love, such righteousness, as is in Christ. No Jew could possibly understand it, nor did God reveal it then. There was yet the reason of the reserve mentioned before; the law stood in the way. Yet have we seen some dim confirmation in the fact that there was nothing said or done to limit the efficacy of Jehovah's lot, as there was in the people's lot. There was a not insignificant difference, as already pointed out, in the then absence of express confession of Israel's sins, and of laying on of hands. It was, no doubt, in the people's view, to bring down a shower of blessing upon them only; but in God's mind much more. His nature, word, majesty, and character, were met in the offering for sin. The effect of the antitype is that now God delights in sending His glad tidings to every creature. But still the fact remains that some who hear the gospel are saved, and some are not. Sinners who hear it are the more guilty if they believe not, and they must perish everlastingly.

Is it then that the saved are better men than the unsaved? Do you presume that your superiority is the ground why you stand in the favour of God? Suffer me to have doubts of you, if such is your plea. You will not find scripture to support but condemn you. Not that one forgets for a moment that there is the most decided difference in every soul that is born of God from every other that is not; but does man's superior goodness earn the life of Christ, or draw down the remission of your sins? It is just because I love you, and would be faithful to the truth as revealed, that I say, God forbid! Look at the effect of such a thought. It flatly contradicts His word and nullifies Christ's work. If it were true, God's favour must be turned away from every believer the moment he did not fully answer to the character of Christ; His advocacy would be at an end. Is this true? Is the access to God's presence and grace a fluctuating condition? Does it change like the cloudy face of the sky? Is not the believer's nearness stable and constant? According to the Epistle to the Hebrews, approach to God for the believer is as unbroken as the efficacy of the work of Christ for his sins. But, you say, God chastises. Certainly. So you chastise your child when it is needed; but you do not love it the less, nor is it less your child. On the contrary, it is because you are its father, and love it dearly, that you have the rod, and are called to use it.

It is a wonderfully blessed thing to know that God has been pleased to bring us who believe into nothing but favour; if it were not so, even after pardon, we should be lost over and over again. But salvation is a status that attaches to the believer through his course; and bow is this marked? That there is, not only propitiation to meet the character of God, that He may proclaim His love in Christ to every creature; but also substitution to secure an absolute cleansing away of all the sins of every believer. Hoping to expound this more minutely, I purposely put the two things together now to give an adequate view of the difference between propitiation and substitution, which together constitute the atonement.

You will find that there is a continual tendency of the different classes, even of believers, in Christendom to ignore one or other of these truths. Take, for instance, those that maintain that the gospel ought to go out to every creature. It is notorious that such men habitually deny God's special favour to the elect. They overlook or pare down any positive difference on God's part towards His own children. They hold that a man may be a child of God today and not to-morrow, throughout his course. Now this destroys substitution. They hold propitiation, and there they are right and therefore are quite justified in preaching the gospel unrestrictedly to every creature, as the Lord indeed enjoined. But how their one-sidedness enfeebles the proper portion of the saints! They cannot but reduce to a minimum the rich unfoldings of divine love in the settled relationships of faith, as He has revealed in the Apostolic Epistles generally, whence they try to cull out appeals to the unconverted, or to attenuate what is meant for God's children, if they do not dangerously extend their privileges to the unsaved.

But look now for a moment at the opposite side. There are those who hold that all God has done and now reveals is in view of the elect only, that all He has wrought in Christ Jesus is in effect for the church, and that He does not care a pin about the world, except to judge it at the last day. This may be put rather bluntly; and I care not to present such grievous unfeelingness for man and dishonour of God and His Son in as polished terms as those might desire who cherish notions so narrow and unsavoury. Yet a certain respectable class around us do see but the elect as the object of God. Such go not in doctrine beyond the second goat, or the people's lot. They see the all-importance of substitution; as their adversaries are absorbed in the effect of propitiation.

How come the two contending parties of religionists not to see the truth of both the goats? There both are distinctly in the word of God. Why is it that those, who rightly urge that the message of God's grace should freely go out to every creature, fail to hold the security of the believer too? What a blotting out of Christ's love to the church! Such is the inevitable result of taking up one part of the truth and setting it against another. Thus we see the importance of holding, not merely a truth, but the truth. Here plainly there are two sides. The goat of propitiation provides in the fullest manner for the glory of God; even where sin is before Him. In doing it, what was the consequence? Christ was forsaken of God that the believer should never be forsaken. Christ bore the judgment of sin that God's glory might be immutably established in righteousness. Thus grace in the freest way can and does now go out to every creature here below.

But besides this opening of the sluices that divine love might flow freely over the sand, however barren in itself, we also find another line of truth altogether; the fullest and nicest care that those who are His children should be kept in peace and blessing. They had been guilty as any, as indifferent as others to God. They were the children of wrath and served Satan as truly as the worst of those vitro refuse the gospel. And see how God has provided for their evil, when we come to the goat of substitution. "Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquity of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their iniquities." Language seems almost to fail, in order to express the fulness of grace in securing relief to the guilty people, whatever might be their sins and iniquities. God took care, not only of His own glory and nature, but to give them knowledge of salvation by the remission of their sins.

Thus even the type demonstrates that we require these two distinct truths to maintain the balance of God's word. It is a blessed thing to hold the outgoing of God's grace to every creature, but not at the sacrifice of the security of those who believe. Thus only is maintained in any measure of truth that firm Rock on which the elect stand. Their salvation is as secure as the message of grace is free. Supposing you blur the difference between the two goats, and crush them up, if one may say so, into one indistinguishable mass — the dead and the live goat — so that the difference between them is gone, what follows? Either that you become exclusively devoted to the gospel that God sends to every sinner under heaven, or that you shut yourself up to think only of the elect and their salvation. The worst is that each virtually makes out God to be such an one as themselves in their short-sightedness. It is plain that these two things are of exceeding importance if not taken up exclusively. As parts of the truth, they are admirably held together and so they compose God's truth. In the first goat God has secured His majesty, His love, and His righteousness, in the going forth of His message to every creature. In the second goat He has equally cared for the security of each one of His people, in knowing that all his sins, transgressions, and iniquities, are completely borne away. Can one conceive how the truth of atonement could be more admirably shown by types beforehand?

Only let us preserve the order of the subjects as much as possible. Therefore, on the next occasion on which I hope to address you, it will devolve on me to point out the way in which the blessed truth of atonement exceeds the type of both goats. It may seem hard for some to admit such a possibility; but it will be a privilege to show you that there is a further truth connected with "the bullock," which has its own peculiarity for those who are the object of that great offering; and this is not without its perfect answer and solution in the New Testament. For the present I trust that the general distinction between the two goats has been sufficiently cleared, and the necessity seen for them both.

Let me only finish now what I would say by drawing your attention to a verse which is given rightly in the Authorised Version, but with grievous defect in the Revised Version. This is rather a serious charge, when one thinks of a work which was produced by a considerable company (some of them really learned); afterwards introduced with no small blowing of trumpets; and received with abundant cordiality, if we may judge by the tons of the New Testament copies sold immediately. The matter is not on any recondite point, nor really open to any serious doubt or difficulty. The truth is here plain, and intimately connected with the subject before us.

In Rom. 3: 22 we read these words: "Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all them that believe." In the two clauses we have the principle of the two goats. The truth which answers to the first is "The righteousness of God unto all." This is what follows from Jehovah's lot. God is not the God of Israel only, as the Jews have always sought to make out. Is He not the God of the Gentiles also? It is exactly what the apostle says in this chapter a little farther on: "Yes, of the Gentiles also, if at least God is one who shall justify circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through their faith." But here we have it in the form, "The righteousness of God, by faith in Jesus Christ unto all," after which words there ought to be a comma to make it strictly correct. Next comes in the fruit of the second goat — "and upon all them that believe." Here is stated, as it were, the security of the believer. It is not "unto all them that believe." "Unto" thus distinguished is merely a tendency or direction; and, even when not so, it may not reach all. It expresses whither the gospel goes — "unto all." The gospel addresses itself to every creature, as also every soul is bound to receive the testimony of God's grace, which puts upon them the responsibility of bowing in their hearts to it as from God. It is "unto all"; and the man who does not preach it "unto all" misunderstands his duty as a herald of the gospel.

But on the other hand, the righteousness of God is not merely "unto (εἰς) all them that believe," but upon (ἐπὶ) them. What does "upon" represent there? The effect produced, and this is not upon all mankind, but "upon all that believe." You have, therefore, to distinguish objects in this verse: the universal aspect of the gospel in going out to every creature; and the positive effect upon all them that believe.

Here, as it appears to me, the Authorised Version gives the truth; what do the Revisers? Led away by a mistake very common in some ancient copies, of which certain of their company were almost idolators, they follow the oldest blindly. Å A B C P. with two juniors and some ancient versions, would ordinarily have the greatest weight; but here, by a merely clerical blunder, the scribes seem to have passed from the first πάντας ("all") to the second, with the fatal effect we have described. That later copyists invented the admirably correct and comprehensive distinction, which the common text intimates, is too much to conceive. The distinction too is especially Pauline, which none of the copyists even understood, any more than some modern commentators. Theodoret may interpret unwisely, but he writes unhesitatingly about the two clauses; as indeed they are attested by ancient versions older than any existing MSS. A real conflation is ever feeble, if not false. A slip, if made, might naturally ruin a nicely poised and fully stated truth, which was entirely beyond mediaeval mind to construct or even understand.

The result at, any rate is, "The righteousness of God unto all them that believe." This is the form given in the Revised Version. What is the consequence? That they have unwittingly taken away from scripture a double truth. The two branches of the truth are mixed up, so that one cannot get at either. Thus is produced a hotch-potch of both clauses, which destroys the exact sense of each.

For the effect of the reading adopted is that there is not a word "unto all" sinners as such; and to the believer is brought merely an offer of the gospel. Is not this exactly what remains? There is "the righteousness of God unto all them that believe," if they like to accept it. On the one hand the blessing of the gospel is not made sure for the believer; on the other the unbeliever has no gracious overture from God, because His righteousness is only said to be "unto all them that believe." Yet the words omitted state the double truth in perfection, which the Revisers virtually treat as a blunder of the scribes; whereas no mere man ever did invent so perfect a statement of the truth. Thus the change does not here leave the smallest ground-work for preaching the gospel to the unconverted, whilst it takes away the safety and settled comfort of the believer. Yet the verse is read as if a perfectly adequate authority sustained it, although there is a simple and sure way of explaining why the intervening words were omitted. The transcriber's eye might readily pass from one "all" (π.) to the other and thus give, for the large truth of God, a poor word of man, which is not really scripture. But why did the Revisers adopt the error? Through their excessive confidence in the external evidence without adequate consideration of the internal. They have, as I believe, marred and maimed the double statement of God's truth in the passage, and furnished that which answers neither to the first goat nor to the second. How important to have the truth represented by the twofold type!

LECTURE 3.

LEVITICUS 16: 11-1 9.

Its General Principle compared with Christ's Work.

The first act of Aaron that now claims our consideration is the sacrifice of the bullock for the sin offering. It was expressly for himself and his house. But it is important here as elsewhere to bear in mind the tone, character, and limits of typical instruction. There is an analogy, because it cannot otherwise be a type; but there are limits, because it is only a type and "not the very image." Atonement, according to the full mind and intent of God, could have been but once accomplished, and only by the true High Priest, even Christ. A typical form was all that could be now, for Aaron was sinful as the people were; but He whom Aaron represented, as He needed no sin-offering, so could He Himself be made sin for us. It is well to seize the difference — and in some cases contrast — not merely in what is here so obvious, but because there are other points to be noted which may not seem equally plain, where nevertheless the same principle as really applies. We must not fail invariably to read the type in the light of Christ, instead of reducing Christ to the measure of the type.

Great mistakes have been made since (if not in) the first century through neglect of the right use of Christ as He is now fully revealed. So it was, to my own personal knowledge, even among Christians more than usually versed in scripture, forty years ago at least; so it has been since, and may be at any time. Two portions of the word of God seem peculiarly liable to a kindred sort of misconstruction, perhaps one might rather say three. The earliest in point of place are the types of the Levitical economy. Next comes the book of the Psalms, as bringing in the heart in all its varied feelings, about either the wants and trials of man, or the anticipations given of God; but Christ's Spirit is there, and hence the need of not confounding the first man with the Second. Thirdly, there is the prophetic word, so open to bias and error where Christ is not seen duly and His kingdom. In all these three departments of divine truth (and it pretty much comprehends the O.T.), who is sufficient for these things? What need of dependence on God, and watchfulness against self, that we may have divine guidance!

There is here, as everywhere, but one safeguard. Human canons do not preserve, nor certainly is truth due to human tradition but to Christ kept by the Spirit before us. He alone of God is made to us wisdom; and it never can be otherwise. As He is the life of the Christian, so is He the true light that now shines, the only One who ever did enlighten, and fully. Therefore, we are only safe in following Him through God's word, these portions especially which without Him are indeed dark. But as there is "no darkness at all" in God, so there is none Christ does not graciously dispel, save what unbelief makes for itself in slighting or forcing His word. Reading it hastily we may find peculiar difficulty, where it lies outside our own relationship. For instance, we come in contact with that which is according to the status or measure of the Jew; but we are Christians and ought never to forget our own place. Again, there are depths of grace and glory in Christ, where it becomes us to bow our heads and adore, rather than to rush in familiarly on such holy ground. But there is no danger in keeping behind, yet close to, Christ; there is all possible blessing in hearing His voice. Let us now endeavour to conform to that only just, true, and full rule for interpreting the word of God. At this point it becomes particularly needful, because our theme concerns the utmost nearness to the presence of God.

We have looked a little at Jehovah's lot, the goat that was slain whose blood was also brought in; nevertheless we are above all to look into the meaning and application of the sacrifice for Aaron and his house.

Now the bullock necessarily has a special principle attached to it. Scripture never heaps together things unmeaningly as men sometimes do. The bullock, though it has a general aim in common with the first goat, was expressly distinct and has marked differences. On the face of the chapter there was but one bullock, though there were two goats. As it was the largest sort of offering, so here it has a higher direction. The bullock was offered only for the priestly house. There was no complementary bullock to be driven away with their sins laid and confessed on its head, like the second goat which followed up the first, after a notable interval. The bullock and the first goat were slain as nearly about the same time as possible — the bullock first (ver. 11), the goat afterwards (ver. 15).

But a remarkable type intervenes before the blood of either was carried within. And Aaron "shall take a censor full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil; 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" (ver. 12, 13). What does this mean? The traditional idea is that incense represents the prayers of the saints: surely an irrelevant interpretation as applied, not only to the type before us, but to what is analogous in the book of Leviticus, and indeed wherever incense is offered nuder the law. In the special circumstances of Rev. 5, we do find the prayers of the saints symbolised by incense (ver. 8); but in the very same book, Rev. 8: 3, we read of "much incense" given, in order to impart efficacy to the prayers of all the saints at the golden altar which was before the throne. Here the distinctness of the incense from the prayers is beyond argument. It is clear from this, sustained by a great deal more elsewhere, that incense cannot be assumed to mean absolutely or only prayers Of the saints. The royal priests in Rev. 5 present the prayers of the saints as incense; the angel high-priest in Rev. 8 puts to the prayers of all the saints much incense, which no creature could do — only Himself. Where would be the sense in adding the prayers of the saints to the prayers of the saints? We must therefore look for a larger truth in explanation; nor really is it far to seek. Early in Leviticus, and specially in Exodus, we may find seasonable help.

Thus in Ex. 30 we have the detailed composition of the holy perfume for Jehovah, which was not for man "to smell thereto" on pain of being cut off. This it was which beaten small was to be put before the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation. It set forth the fragrant grace of Christ, the more tried so much the more abundantly sweet to God. It was what He peculiarly appreciated in Christ. Here the prayers of saints are out of the question. It prefigures the personal grace of Christ tried to the utmost, but even in the minutest thing agreeable to God Who alone could estimate it.

In Lev. 2 we have nothing to do with the prayers of the saints, but Christ livingly acceptable to God. Therefore incense enters as an important element in the "meal (not "meat") offering." Fine flour, oil mingled or anointed, or both, with salt, were therein; or ears of corn green or full. But the peculiar claim of "all the pure incense" for God is ever reserved. The remnant, after the memorial handful for the burning as a sweet savour to Jehovah, was Aaron's and his sons'; but "all frankincense" was burnt upon the altar. It was the expression of Christ's personal grace in its unspeakable preciousness to God. Our prayers are clearly out of the question. Do not all these offerings at the beginning of Leviticus speak exclusively of Christ? If none but the presumptuous would dispute the bearing of the holocaust, of the peace-offering, and of those for sin and trespass, it ought not to be doubted that the meat-offering has at least as much of the character of Christ offered up to God, as any other oblation. They are the reflection of Christ and His work, each in a distinctive way.

Surely incense here has nothing to do with the prayers of the saints. Is it not the fragrant grace of Christ's presence which God alone could appreciate in Him, and in Him only? All went up to God. Elsewhere it was His grace rising up in intercession, when making prayers of saints acceptable to God. Ex. 30: 34-38 might afford a still clearer proof of the reference to Christ, where our prayers would be quite out of place. But time fails to dwell further on this interesting type, which testifies of the fragrance of Christ's personal grace to God, and in no way points here to the prayers of saints, whatever His grace also in making them acceptable.

Before the blood then,