SECTION IV. PROOF OF CHRIST'S ATONEMENT—ANCIENT SACRIFICES. WE Come now to a part of our subject which is of great importance. Hitherto we have been occupied with what may be reckoned preliminary matter. It was necessary to explain the nature of atonement; to show that the objections commonly urged against the principle are destitute of weight; and to evince the necessity that exists in the character and government of God for such an arrangement, in order to the bestowment of pardon on guilty men. But these do not prove the fact of an atonement. They suppose such a thing to exist, either actually or in the divine intention; but they afford no evidence of its existence. Had atonement been nothing more than a theory, all that has been said would have been necessary for its explanation and defence. But atonement is more than a theory; it is a FACT; a solemn, important, and undoubted fact, which is capable of being substantiated by the most complete and satisfactory scriptural evidence. This evidence is multifarious, ample, and diversified. Without pretending to exhibit the whole, or even any branch of it completely, the nature of our undertaking calls for such a digest as will require the diligent study and patient attention of the reader. Let us, first of all, give our thoughts to the antiquity and universal prevalence of vicarious sacrifices, irrespective altogether of the Mosaic economy. This is a point of no small moment. If it can only be firmly established, as we presume there will be no difficulty in doing, the confirmation it affords of the fact in question is of the very strongest nature. It involves, however, a variety of points which require to be taken up separately and in order. I. A primary consideration is due to the ANTIQUITY of sacrifices. We speak now only of the fact, that the practice of offering sacrifices to God existed in the remotest ages of the world. The infliction of death on a living creature, in the way of religious worship, did not originate, as many suppose, with the Jews. When the Israelites entered the holy land, they found its aboriginal inhabitants addicted to the practice. Certain forms of it being expressly denounced in the law of Moses, is positive proof of its existence prior to the promulgation of that extraordinary document. In the records of heathen nations, also, as far back as they go, traces of it are to be found; and the sacred history, which goes the farthest back of any records with which we are acquainted, contains abundant proof of the antiquity of sacrifices. In the book of Job, which is perhaps the oldest writing in existence, mention is made of sacrificing more than once. The patriarch himself followed the practice - And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and OFFERED BURNT-OFFERINGS according to the number of them all."* The same thing was exemplified, under the sanction of a divine command, by Job's friends :-'Therefore take unto you now,' said God, 'seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and OFFER UP FOR YOURSELVES A BURNT-OFFERING, and my servant Job shall pray for you.....So Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, went and DID ACCORDING AS THE LORD COMMANDED THEM.' Abraham, if not belonging to a previous age, was at least contemporary with the man of Uz, and he also followed the same practice :'And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns and Abraham went and took the ram, and OFFERED HIM UP FOR A BURNT-OFFERING in the stead of his son.'‡ Nearly five hundred years earlier than this, we find Noah, the second father of our race, acting a similar part on an occasion of great solemnity and importance :- And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and Offered BURNT-OFFERINGS on the altar.'§ Pushing our inquiry into still more remote antiquity, we meet with the practice, in the case of Abel, at a distance of not less than fifteen hundred years from the case last adduced :-' And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof; and the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his OFFERING.'|| * Job. i. 5. † Job xlii. 8, 9. ‡ Gen. xxii. 13. || Gen. iv. 4. § Gen. viii. 20. Nor is even this the highest antiquity to which the evidence of the existence of sacrifices can be carried. We are now, indeed, within little more than a hundred years of the creation of man. But, unless we greatly mistake, there is good reason to believe that the practice of sacrificing was coeval with the fall of man. We know not what else to make of the circumstance of our first parents being provided with garments of the skins of animals Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make COATS OF SKIN, and clothed them.** The animals whose skins furnished this primitive clothing, must have been dead, and the question is, how came they by their death ?— Were they slain on purpose, merely to furnish garments for our first parents? This, to say the least of it, is extremely improbable, when we consider that there were so many other ways by which the same end could have been accomplished, without inflicting pain on sentient and innocent creatures. Can they be supposed to have died of themselves? This is barely possible, but not at all probable. They had just lately been created in perfection, and that in so short a time they should have died a natural death is a most violent supposition. Could they have been slain for food? This, too, is an unreasonable presumption. does not appear that animal food was in use till after the flood. The first grant of animals for meat, which we find on record, is that given to Noah after the deluge. To man, at first, we read * Gen. iii. 21. It only of the herb of the field and the fruit of the tree yielding seed being given for meat.* How, then, we repeat the question, could those animals have died whose skins were the clothing of our first parents? And the only answer that accords with reason, or with the facts of the case, is, that they were slain for sacrifices. The impossibility of satisfactorily accounting otherwise for their death, taken in conjunction with the mention made of animal sacrifices immediately afterwards, gives to this supposition the weight of the very highest presumption, if not the force of absolute demonstration.† And thus are we entitled to claim, for the practice of sacrificing, the highest possible antiquity. The most ancient records, both sacred and profane, furnish evidence in point. The farthest back that we can carry our inquiries, even with the assistance of divine revelation, we meet with traces of the practice in question. It is as old nearly as creation: it is coeval with man. II. Connect with this, the UNIVERSAL PREVALENCE of sacrifices. Of this fact there can be as little doubt as of that of which we have just been speaking. The one, indeed, serves to account for the other. The antiquity of the practice explains its universality. Having its origin at a time when the inhabitants of the earth were few in number, its adoption by all who were then living can easily be conceived; and this again satisfactorily accounts for its being spread by them among their more numerous de * See Magee on Aton., v. ii. p. 31. Smith on Sac., p. 230. |