tion;" that "he was crucified through weakness, and yet liveth by the power of God." All this, it is held, is significantly taught by the two-fold symbol of the slain and the emissary goat, the one designed as a vicarious sacrifice for sin, the other as a living memorial of its benign effects. In the latter we see the sins of believers carried away, and removed from them as far as the east is from the west; in a word, as lost, blotted out, extinguished forever from the divine remembrance.

This view of the typical purport of the rite before us is very ancient, having been held by Theodoret, Cyril, Augustin, and Procopius, and while ingenious and plausible in itself, it does not, that we are aware, go counter to the general genius of the Mosaic economy, distinguished, as it was, by a vast and unspeakable richness of symbolical imagery. At the same time, we cannot but suggest, that this explanation labors under a liability to two objections of considerable weight. (1.) The sins of Israel, in the typical ceremony, were laid upon the head of the live goat, which was then, as a figure of the risen, justified, and justifying Saviour, to be sent away into the wilderness. But how does this correspond with the facts in regard to the Antitype. Christ bore the sins of men, not as rising, but as dying. He rose from the dead, and entered into glory "without sin ;" nor do we any where learn that he continues after his death to sustain the same expiatory office that he did at his death. On the contrary, we are assured that he was once offered to bear the sins of many ;" and that "by this one offering he hath forever perfected them that believe." (2) We learn from v. 26, that "he that let go the goat for Azazel was to wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in water, and afterwards come into the camp." From this it appears, that contact with the goat made the person who handled him, even for the purpose of sending him away, unclean. This was in consequence of the sins with which the scape-goat was putatively charged and loaded previous to his dismission. But as no uncleanness can be supposed to attach to Christ subsequent to his resurrection, it is difficult to conceive how any ceremonial taint should cleave to his representing symbol.

Influenced by these and other considerations, and dissenting moreover, from the opinion that "Azazel" was the name of the goat, Faber, following the footsteps of Witsius, has

propounded the following solution of the spiritual purport of the rite.* "Christ," he remarks, "laid down his life for us that we might go free; and this sacrifice of himself upon the cross, was typified by every bloody sacrifice under the Law, and therefore, among others, by the piacular devotement of that goat, which fell by lot to Jehovah. Here we have the great mystery of the gospel, so well described by the Apostle, as that which could alone exhibit God both just and yet the justifier of them that believe in Christ Jesus. But this is not the whole of our Lord's character. At the very commencement of the Bible, it was foretold that, although the promised seed of the woman shall finally bruise the head of the serpent, yet the serpent should first bruise his heel or mortal part. If then the serpent was to bruise his mortal part, that mortal part must needs be delivered over to the power of the serpent; for of himself, he could possess no such superiority, even during a single moment. Hence it will follow, that Satan, bent only on satiating his own malice, and unconscious that he was actually subserving the divine purposes of mercy, was the agent who, through his earthly tools, effected the death of the Messiah. . . . . . Such being the Scriptural character of our Lord, it is evident that no single type can perfectly exhibit it in both its parts. The various bloody sacrifices of the Law pre-figured it in one part, viz., that which respected the atonement made with God for the sins of man; but they spoke nothing concerning its other part, viz., that which respected the delivering up of the Messiah to the infernal serpent, with the permissive power of bruising his mortal frame. On this second part they were silent; and if it were at all to be shadowed out under the ceremonial law, such a purpose could only be effected by the introduction of a new type, connected indeed with the usual sacrificial type, but kept nevertheless studiously distinct from it. A double type, in short, must be employed, if the character of Christ under its two-fold aspect was to be completely pre-figured.

Now the two goats, which are jointly denominated a sinoffering (Lev. 16: 5.) constitute a type of this identical de

* Hor. Mos. vol. ii. p. 259, Comp. Witsius on the Covenants, vol. ii. p. 230.

SECOND SERIES, VOL. VIII. NO. 1.

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scription. The two together present us with a perfect symbolical delineation of our Lord's official character, while he was accomplishing the great work of our redemption. The goat which fell to the lot of Jehovah was devoted as a sinoffering, after the manner of any other sin-offering, by its being piacularly slain. This type represented the Messiah in the act of satisfying the strict justice of God, by consenting to lay down his life sacrificially in our stead, and on our behalf. But the goat which fell to the lot of Azazel was first imputatively loaded with the sins of the whole people, and was then symbolically given up to the rage of the evil spirit, by being turned loose into the wilderness, which was deemed his favorite terrestrial haunt. This second type represented the Messiah burdened with the transgressions of all mankind, deserted for a season by his heavenly Father, and delivered into the hand of the prince of darkness with a full permission granted to the apostate angel, of mortally bruising his heel or human nature. Such I conceive to be the plain and obvious interpretation of the ceremonial which was observed in the great day of atonement. Yet from a part of the ordinance respecting the live goat, I think it not improbable that a special previsionary regard may have been mysteriously had to a very remarkable part of our Saviour's history. When the goat was delivered up to the malice of Satan, it was turned loose into the wilderness. In a similar manner, "Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil," (Matt. 4: 1;) and here, when he had fasted forty days, and was afterwards an hungered, the fiend commenced upon him that series of attacks which terminated only with his death upon the cross. Thus perfect throughout is the similitude between the type and the antitype."

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This view we submit to the reader for what he may deem it worth. If we had not what we esteem a still better solution to propose, we should be inclined to adopt it, at least in preference to the common and accredited mode of explication. But we think we can point out a more excellent way" of solving the mystery of the scape-goat, and to this we now invite attention, simply premising that a hint contained in a quotation from the old commentator, Conrad Pellican, whose own work we have never seen, contains the germ of the exposition which we have expanded to much fuller dimensions, and sustained by a new array of evidence, in the remarks that follow.

It is evident that in making out the proof, that " Azazel” signifies something else than the scape-goat itself, a new complexion is given at once to the whole passage. If the falling of the lot to Azazel indicated the consignment of the emissary goat to some real or imaginary spirit of evil, then it is palpable that a typical or symbolical scope entirely different from the common one must be recognized in the ceremony. We do not perceive in what sense, or with what propriety, an animal could be dedicated to Satan, and still be considered as a type of Christ. "Satan cometh, and hath nothing in me," said the Saviour himself when on earth, and we cannot but ask, on what ground a typical rite is to be referred to Him, the direct and prominent import of which expressed a peculiar appropriation to Satan, as of something to which he had an acknowledged and paramount right. Surely no one can be insensible to the incongruity which reigns throughout the whole transaction viewed in this light. However plausible the arguments in favor of such an interpretation, we shrink instinctively from it as derogatory to the pure and sinless nature, and the holy designation, of Jesus. Whatever else might have been shadowed forth by this institute of the Jewish law, we are sure that we are not to look for a prefiguration of Him, who was dedicated as a divine Deodand to God, in a goat set apart by mystic ceremonies to the devil.

What, then, are we to understand by this significant item in the ordinances of the great day of atonement? Something of a symbolical character all will admit in the dismission of the goat, loaded with sin, into the wilderness. Whatever the implication may be, the ceremony itself cannot, we think, imply that the animal, considered in its emblematic character, was regarded by God as acceptable, or looked upon with a complacent eye, but rather the reverse. It was something which was put away as from a feeling of aversion, while on the contrary, the other goat was retained, and, when turned into a sacrificial offering, came up before the Lord as a sweet-scented savor. This utterly diverse treatment and disposal of the two animals compels us to recognize in each an antitypical substance which was to meet with corresponding entertainment at the hands of Jehovah. The one victim pointed to a substance which was to be pre-eminently well pleasing to him; the other, one from which he would turn away with displacency and loathing. The former plainly received its reali

zation in Christ, the beloved Son, in whom his soul delighted; the latter must be accomplished in something which, in comparison, he abhors. In looking around for an object which shall answer these conditions, we know of none that so fully and so fairly meets the demand as the Jewish people themselves. It is here, if we mistake not, in the apostate, derelict, and reprobate race of Israel, rejected (not irrevocably) for their rejection of the Messiah, that we behold the substantiated truth of the shadow before us.

Certain it is that this signal event of the judicial rejection. of the covenant people, was in the prescience of Jehovah ages before it occurred, and we see nothing incongruous in the idea, that it might have been mystically fore-shown by some appropriate rite in the ancient economy. And if this be granted, what occasion more suitable for the exhibition of this rite, than that of the great national festival of expiation, in which the atoning death of the divine substitute for sinners was most significantly set forth? This day was replete with solemn prognostics of that still more momentous day when Christ, the true victim, should make his soul an offering for sin, and we well know that it was in putting the Messiah to death on that occasion, that that wicked nation were so to con centrate and consummate their guilt as to necessitate, to the divine counsels, their exclusion from the pale of the covenant, at least for a long lapse of centuries. We may indeed admit that such a typical intimation would be very apt to be in its own nature obscure. It would be one of peculiarly latent meaning for the time then being, for the people would be slow to read the sentence of their own rejection in any of the national rites, and in order that it might not be read, it was doubtless designedly shrouded in a veil not easily penetrated, and couched in an action so closely connected with another of different import, that it was in itself easily susceptible a construction apparently sound, yet really fallacious and false.

We are well aware that it may be objected to this mode of viewing the transaction, that the sins of the congregation were, by putative transfer, laid upon the head of the emissary goat, as their appointed substitute, in whose dismission they were to find remission. The language, moreover, would seem to be peculiarly express to this effect, when it is said that the scapegoat should be "presented alive before the Lord, to make an