not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. By the authority of him, who spoke as never man spake, righteousness by the sacrificial worship so blinded men, that they were beyond the hope of grace and mercy, and under their delusion, they committed the most accursed crime in the book of time.

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CHAPTER IX

JESUS SLAIN NOT SACRIFICED

F THE crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and the sacrifices by the patriarchs, and by the Aaronic priesthood typify his cruci

fixion as a sacrifice, then there should be in them clear parallels with the manner of his sufferings and death. The two great sacrificial celebrations by the Israelites were the passover and the day of atonement.

The passover was a yearly feast, commemorating the deliverance of their fathers out of their bondage in Egypt. The day of atonement was the great national gathering, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, when the high priest went into the holy of holies and pronounced the name of Jehovah, which was unlawful to be spoken at any other time.

The passover was eaten at midnight. Jesus ate it with his disciples the night before he suffered. The passover was an occasion of high rejoicing. A lamb was slain for the supper, and its flesh seethed in preparation for the feast. When the supper was ended the fragments were carefully gatherd up, so that nothing of it remained till the morning.

The crucifixion of Jesus was the day after the pascal lamb was slain, and the supper eaten. His flesh was not seethed, nor eaten at supper. The bones of the pascal lamb were broken to prepare it for the table. Not a bone of his body was broken, as had been foretold by prophecy. There was no rejoicing by his friends on the occasion. His body was embalmed, and with sad hearts, they laid it in the tomb. The day was a time of wild rage, of anxiety, of vexation, of astonishment, of despair and of sorrow.

It was

The day of atonement was the solemn Sabbath. the most sacred of all days. It was kept by fastings, and by prayers, and abstaining from all secular pursuits. The pots and the vessels to be used on the occasion were thoroughly cleansed. The animals offered in sacrifice were without blemish. The high priest, who offered the sacrifices, was chosen from among the priests, on account of his superior piety. When he put on the Urim and the Thumim, he became an oracle to the people, a revealer of divine secrets and of future things. For seven days before the great day of the atonement, the high priest separated himself from the people that he might not be interrupted in his devotions in preparation for the holy day, nor his person defiled by contamination from the people. Early in the morning of the atonement day the high priest bathed himself and put on white linen spotlessly clean, holy clothing. The high priest was the only man, who was permitted to enter the holy of holies, and that was only on this occasion.

The animals sacrificed were offered at the door, in the front of the temple. The high priest according to the laws of Moses, first made an offering for himself, and his family with animals purchased with his own money. Then he presented a ram and two goats in behalf of the people, which had been purchased with money taken out of the public treasury. Lots were cast upon the two goats. One was chosen for Jehovah, and the other called the scapegoat for Azazel, the devil.

The goat upon which the lot fell for Jehovah was slain by the high priest. He carefully preserved its blood. Taking with him some of the blood, he entered the temple, filled a censer with burning coals from off the brazen altar, took a handful of incense, and entered into the holy of holies. He

threw the incense upon the coals, which caused a cloud of smoke to envelop the mercy seat, and sprinkled the blood upon and before the mercy-seat. In the cloud of incense the presence of the Shekinah appeared above the mercy-seat.

The fat of the animals slain was burnt on the altar of the temple, by the high priest. The law of Moses forbade the drinking of the blood, and the eating of the fat of animals. "The life is in the blood. All the fat is Jehovah's. It shall be a perpetual statute for all our generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye shall eat neither fat, nor blood. The blood is the container of the life, and the fat is its immediate support. The blood of the sacrifices typified the divine life in men, in the light of its possibility of becoming holy, even as Jehovah is holy. The fat typifies our bodies, as the temple of the holy spirit, sanctified in its glorified power, life everlasting. The muscles, the bones, the skin, and the inward parts represent our natural bodies, which must die or pass away, and so were burnt without the camp.

Under the great object lessons of divine truth, with Moses teaching them, there grew up a generation in Israel, with divine life so quickened in them; when their fathers were all dead, as soon as Joshua girt his sword upon his thigh, they rose up and followed him into the land, promised to their father Abraham and his seed after him, arresting the swift running Jordan by the power of the holiness of life in them; by the same faith the walls of Jerico fell down, after they had compassed it about for seven days; the sun at Joshua's command stood still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, till they had fought their battle, and won their victory for God.

The sacrifices by the patriarchs were the coming into a

'Lev. 3:16-17.

holy communion with Jehovah, that their life in the flesh might be slain, to make way for the sacred life of God in them. It is one thing for sacrifices to typify the holiness of God, and the quickening of divine life in us; and a very different thing to look upon them, as a price paid to purchase divine favor. It is one thing to see Jesus as perfect and complete humanity, under the light of whose life we may come into the image of the Father, and a very different thing to consider his sufferings and death as a ransom given an angry God, to let us guilty sinners go unpunished. Jesus was the great prophet, and not the great successor of bulls and goats. The value of the animal offered in sacrifice was not considered. Animals were selected for sacrifice with a view to their cleanness. The animals presented in sacrifices, in behalf of the people on the day of atonement, were purchased with money taken out of the temple's treasury. The money which purchased Jesus into the hands of his slayers was adjudged as money not lawful to be put into the sacred treasury, because it was the price of blood; so they bought a potter's field with it to bury strangers in, the unhallowed Gentiles.

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Instead of being put to death in the front of the temple, by the hands of the high priest clad in sacred garments, and set apart by solemn prayer, Jesus was nailed to the cross by the hands of pagan soldiers, dressed in the garb of Roman executioners; outside of the walls of the sacred city, on Calvary the hill where criminals were executed; and he was put between two thieves as the prince of criminals. John speaks of the place as Sodom and Egypt, with dead bodies lying in the -streets. Instead of being a holy sacrifice, it was a work of cruel injustice. "He was wounded on account of the iniquities

'Isa. 53:5-6.