sacrificial feast. That is, the impurity and other obstacles were first of all removed from the people, the Covenant was formed, the blood was partly poured out upon the ground, and partly sprinkled on the people, and the representatives of the people then ascended the mount, and saw the God of Israel, and ate and drank in the mount (Ex. xxiv.) Here the sacrifice was used as a means of establishing a close and special relation with the God of Israel. After the Covenant was established, any violation of it which arose from time to time was got rid of by a sacrifice. The ritual of the sacrifice included again the pouring out of the blood, the burning of the fat upon the altar, and the burning of the rest of the body in a clean place outside the camp (Lev. iv. 12, 21). Here there was no communion. The blood was poured out, the fat and inward parts (which, according to the Semitic view, were specially the home of the life) were burnt upon the altar, symbolizing the dedication of the individual for whom the sacrifice was made; and the rest of the body was burnt outside the camp, symbolizing the removal and destruction of the pollution. The principle of this legislation is clearly set down in Lev. xvii. 11-14, where it is absolutely forbidden to eat the blood of any animal. The provision is made to include the animals slain in hunting, concerning which it is enacted that the blood shall be poured out and covered with dust.1 The passage runs as follows: 'Whatsoever man there be . . . that eateth any manner of blood, I will set my face against that soul that eateth the blood, and will cut him off from 1 This reminds us of the very common conviction among undeveloped nations, of the enormous importance of killing an animal. It was hardly ever done at all except with a sacrificial intent. Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 223, 224.

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among his people. For the life (soul) of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life (soul).' The point then of the use of the blood is that by it the life of the animal is set free for a new use. The blood atones not in itself, as though a mere vindictive demand for death were the meaning of the sacrifice, but in virtue of the life which resides in it (cf. Westcott, Epistles of S. John, p. 34). This circumstance determines other points also in the ritual. The animal is slain by the offerer, or at least he is in some way identified with it, e.g. by laying his hands on its head. But the blood is offered by the priest, the proper intermediary between God and man. The death of the animal seems to have typified the voluntary submission of the offender. This fiction was carried out in heathen sacrifices by decking the victim with garlands.

B. There seem, then, to be three prominent ideas lying at the root of Jewish sacrifice, and, in a less definite degree, of heathen sacrifice as well: (1) the sacrifice is a means to communion; (2) the worshipper is identified with the victim; (3) the victim is presented before God. The whole conception is satisfied by the Sacrifice of Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews is chiefly concerned with the Sacrifice of Christ as fulfilling and setting aside the ancient sacrificial system; and this thesis is developed in a twofold way. Christ's Sacrifice is represented as the initiation of a new covenant and as availing for the removal of moral separation from God. The Pauline conception of the Work of Christ centres upon our identity with Him; the fact that we are in Christ, and are therefore no longer to be

confronted with an external condemnatory law. S. John emphasizes more often the sacrifice of life culminating in the Death upon the Cross. We will illustrate these various aspects of the work of Christ, and then consider some of the questions arising from it.

(1) The Pauline treatment of the question depends upon the special view taken by him of the results of the Fall, together with the peculiar condition of the churches to whom he wrote.

The elaborated doctrine of the Atonement as held by S. Paul is to be found in the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, but collateral ideas are frequent in other Epistles also. Christ, according to S. Paul, is the second Adam; that is, He initiates a new stage or period in the history of humanity. His acts are representative, like the acts of the first Adam (cf. 1 Cor. xv. 45-49; Romans v. 12-21). The special aim of Christ's Sacrifice is to reverse the results of the Fall. The Fall had involved all men in slavery to sin, and to the flesh, the seat of the activity of sin. From this slavery Christ freed us, bought us back. Further, while in sin we were under the Divine wrath: the Blood of Christ's Cross reconciled us again. These ideas must be illustrated in detail. The contrast between freedom and slavery is seen clearly in the allegory of Hagar and Ishmael (Gal. iv. 21-31). For the Law was a sign of the bondage of sin. It is true that it was 'spiritual and holy and just' (Rom. vii. 12, 14), but it was external to mankind. It was the 'letter' as opposed to 'the spirit' (2 Cor. iii. 6, 7). It represented by its external and condemning attitude the separation of man from God. It certainly revealed the will of God, but in such a way as to excite the opposition of the human spirit, and to bring home to it the impossibility of obedience (Rom.

vii. 7-12; Gal. iii. 19-22). Thus, though it was a privilege to the Jews to be entrusted with the oracles of God' in this way (Rom. iii. 1, 2), the Law condemned the Jew no less than his own feebler light condemned the Gentile (Rom. ii. 12, 13, 25-27). The giving of the Law, therefore, was not only a privilege separating the Jews and honouring them above all nations-a stage in the redemptive Purpose of God, but it was also a sign of enmity between God and man. All men were enemies when Christ came, even though the Law had been given years before. Moreover, the Law was given to the Jews only, it separated between nations; the Gentiles were outside its operation, without hope or promise, fenced off by a partition wall. But Christ abolished this distinction, which never fully represented God's true position as regards mankind; and through Him we all have access. in one Spirit to the Father. The universal Fatherhood of God emerges in the reconciliation of all His children (Eph. ii. 11-18).

S. Paul had to deal with a large class of persons who regarded Christ's work as leaving the Law in much the same position as before. Christianity in their view was a developed Judaism,—a Judaism with the Messiah come. To S. Paul's mind this was a complete mistake,—an utter want of appreciation of the real state of things. His effort, therefore, is to show that the Law is of a piece with man's condition of enmity with God; that so far from undoing the work of the Fall, and making men just where they were sinners before, it belongs closely to the sinful order of things. Its form of external command and its effect alike prove this. Thus he gives the Galatians their choice between the Law and Christ, and tells them that if they return voluntarily into the

old position of enmity and sin, and submit to circumcision, Christ avails them nothing (chap. v. 2). With the Romans he is less vehement, but no less certain, that in Christ men are delivered from the bondage of the Law. The effect of the atoning Work of Christ, therefore, is to transfer men from one position into another, to reestablish the communion between God and man which sin had broken, and to give them freedom to carry out the will of God in their lives. The Death of Christ is not merely a historic event of which we learn indirectly, —it is one which we positively share by faith, by the grace of God through baptism. The old life of enmity

of the flesh-of the world comes to an end as truly as if we died, and baptism is the moment and the means of this death (Rom. vi. 1-8). And as by God's grace we are permitted to share the Death of Christ, so we share His risen Life. 'I live, yet no longer I, Christ liveth in me' (Gal. ii. 20). Of this and of the meaning of faith we shall have to speak more at length in another connexion. What is made plain by this account of S. Paul's doctrine is this, that in his mind there is present a broad contrast. Two pictures of the condition of mankind in the sight of God are present to him. In one he sees man before the Sacrifice of Christ, an outcast from the favour of God, weak and sinning, confronted with a Law which he can never fulfil. And in the other he sees him absorbed into unity with Christ, the Son of God, the Mediator, living a new life under the inspiration of the Spirit, dead to the old through the Death of Christ, with which he has been identified through faith and in baptism, realizing in Christ his Sonship of the Father, freed from the spirit of fear and bondage and enmity and impiety in which he had spent his worldly life.