without the gate the wrath and curse of God, has finished transgression, and made an end of sin.

This view of the meaning of the priests eating the sin-offering puts us in the right position for appreciating another opinion of Stewart's, which at first sight appears very improbable and inconsistent with the fundamental principle of the sacrificial system; we mean his account of the meat-offering, which he regards as having an expiatory character, although there was here no animal offered, and no blood shed.

In this point he differs not only from Kurtz, but from the great majority of typologists, who have in general regarded the meat-offering as simply eucharistic, and symbolising not the sacrifice of Christ, but the spiritual offerings, the sacrifice of praise, presented by his people as a spiritual priesthood. In opposition to this view, Stewart considers that there are a number of passages that distinctly ascribe an expiatory character to the meat-offering; and holding this proved, he enters upon a very acute and interesting investigation of the way in which he thinks it was so. There is undoubtedly a striking resem blance between the ritual of the meat-offering and that of the sin-offering; both are called most holy; both are subject to the same regulations; and in cases of extreme poverty, it was permitted to bring, instead of a proper sin-offering, one that agreed in all points with the meat-offering, except in the absence of oil and frankincense. He thence infers, that as in eating the sin offering, so in eating the meat-offering the priest acted as the surety of the offerer, and that therefore the latter as well as the former may be regarded as expiatory. In this view of Stewart's, ingenious as it is, we cannot concur. We do not think that he has made out his fundamental position, that Scripture ascribes an expiatory character to this offering. The texts he quotes are not sufficient to support this conclusion, for none of them are taken from the law of sacrifice; and though in the law the term mincha is restricted to bloodless offerings, in other parts of Scripture it is often used in a more general sense, and applied to bloody sacrifices as well. Thus Abel's offering, as well as Cain's, is called a mincha (Gen. iv. 3, 4, 5). And not only does the positive proof adduced by Stewart appear very inadequate, but the objections against his view seem overpoweringly strong. There is against it the general principle laid down both in the Old and New Testament (Lev. xvii. 11, Heb. ix. 22), that it is the blood that makes atonement, and without shedding of blood is no remission. And it will not do here to allege the allowance made in cases of deep poverty, for this is manifestly just one of those exceptions that prove the rule. Again, we should find on this view a difficulty of which Stewart seems to have been conscious, though his attempt

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to get over it is a very lame one, in explaining the difference between the offerings of Cain and Abel, and the reason of the rejection of the one and the acceptance of the other. Once more, we cannot overlook the danger we run by adopting such a view of the mincha, of sliding into the idea of its being offered to God as a present by a suitor or party at law to his adversary or judge to secure his favour, as the very word is used of the gift sent by Jacob to appease the wrath of Esau ; an idea which would not only subvert the whole doctrine of sacrifice, but all right notions of the character and government of God. In the form in which this opinion is held by Stewart, it is indeed securely enough guarded against such a use of it, but we are afraid that no such safeguards can effectually bar such inferences, if we once admit that the unbloody offerings were of a really propitiatory nature; and finally, we think that the many references in the New Testament to the sacrifice of praise cannot be understood as pointing to any other part of the Levitical ritual than the meat-offering and other unbloody sacrifices. On these grounds, we think that the idea of the meat-offering being of an expiatory nature is untenable and dangerous. But we would be inclined to adopt Stewart's view of the suretyship of the priests, implied in their eating the meatoffering, as both true and valuable, and perfectly reconcileable with the ordinary, and, as we think, correct view of the mincha as a type of the believer's sacrifice of praise and good works. That the presenting of the meat-offering on the altar was a memorial, is a Scripture phrase to which Stewart rightly gives great prominence in his elucidation of this subject. But a memorial of what? of good or evil? In the case of the poor man's sin-offering, it was undoubtedly a memorial of sin; hence the absence of oil (the symbol of the Holy Spirit) and incense (the symbol of prayer); but in the case of the ordinary meat-offering, where both oil and incense were used, and where it is said to be, what the other was not, an odour of a sweet savour, must it not be regarded as a memorial, not of evil, but of good, of the services of the reconciled sinner, done in the Spirit and accompanied by prayer? And if so, what will be the meaning of the priest eating even this? Will it not typify his becoming surety, not, as in the other case, for the sins, but for the good works, of the worshippers, and thus indicate not unambiguously the great truth, that even the good works of the saints, being imperfect and stained with sin, can only find acceptance with God through our great Surety and High Priest? that the spiritual sacrifices of the holy priesthood of believers are only acceptable to God through Jesus Christ? Thus though we deny to these oblations a properly expiatory value, we fully agree with Stewart that they point to the suretyship of Christ for the saints, just

as truly as the bloody sacrifices do to his substitution and sacrifice for sinners.

We cannot enter upon the discussion of the many other interesting questions raised in the volumes before us. We have only compared them in a very few points; these, however, are the leading points which form the key to the whole subject. The older typologists erred, perhaps, chiefly in viewing the Mosaic institutions too exclusively in their typical aspect. They simply investigated what the various ceremonies were as mere external actions, and then turned to the New Testament and sought to discover something in the facts and doctrines of the gospel corresponding to each of them, but they did not attend to the spiritual meaning and lessons that the various ceremonies would have to the spiritual worshipper even at the time, before the actual coming of the realities which they foreshadowed. Hence, too, there is often a want of consistency and harmony in their interpretations. They did not always employ one key throughout, but found it convenient sometimes to change the key to the cypher, as it were, and ascribe to the same symbol different meanings in different connections, and even sometimes a double meaning in the same connection. There is not much of this in Stewart, though he is not entirely free from the last-mentioned error. But the more modern school of expositors have gone perhaps to an opposite extreme, and treated the types of the Mosaic economy too much as if their explanation were to be derived solely from themselves, to the neglect of the aid that the New Testament gives to the right understanding of them. Hence they are inclined not only to find too little in the types, but to push a regard to consistency to an extreme by at once rejecting whatever seems inconsistent with established principles, without pausing to inquire whether a similar apparent contradiction may not be found in the antitype as well as in the type, and be due to the inability of the human mind fully to comprehend a scheme so transcendent as the great plan of redemption. But, on the whole, the comparison we have instituted discloses a wonderful amount of agreement between the best exponents of the more ancient and more recent schools, and seems to shew that, while no doubt much has been recently done, and much still may be expected to be done by criticism and research for the elucidation of many of the details of the Mosaic ceremonies, yet, on the whole, the evangelical divines who have in former ages directed their attention to the subject have been successful in interpreting its great leading features, and have raised a system of typology which subsequent discussions have done much to confirm and very little to shake. No doubt it had its defects and errors; no doubt also, whatever its merits, it is

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impossible in the present state of theological science to return simply to the past; we must go forward, not backward; and it is quite plain that even the best system that has yet been propounded is not a final one, and we may hope, if the study of theology in this and other lands is permitted to take and keep a right and scriptural course, that we shall yet one day see an exposition of that old typical system which shall far excel any that the church has yet seen, and shall shed a light and a glory on many an obscure part of the New Testament. May not this be one of the blessings that is to come to the Gentile churches from the restoration of the Jews? Hitherto it has been mainly by Gentiles, aliens by blood, language, and national feeling, that the Hebrew laws and rites have been expounded; and if by them so much has been done, what shall it be when Israel shall turn to the Lord, and the veil that is on their hearts shall be taken away, so that they may see Christ to be the end of the law, the body of which all these things were shadows? Finally, we may indicate just in a word the apologetical value of the consensus of the best divines in the interpretation of the Mosaic institutions as an evidence of the authenticity and inspiration of the Pentateuch. Who was the author of this body of moral and spiritual symbolism, so minute in its details, so ingenious in its analogies, so profound and heavenly in its lessons? Was it could it have been-can even the most credulous sceptic believe that it was the accidental result of a series of pious frauds, only less wonderful for their audacity than for their success? If so, then we may expect to gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles. J. S. C.

III.-The Church and the French Revolution.

L'Eglise et la Révolution Française. Histoire des relations de l'Eglise et 'de l'Etat, de 1789 à 1802. Par EDMOND DE PRESSENSé. Paris, Ch. Meyrueis.

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LADY, whose conversion to Roman Catholicism made some sensation, the Countess Ida of Hahn-Hahn, penned the following lines, which, we doubt not, many of her co-religionists would endorse :-"When we read, in the history of the French Revolution, the recital of the unheard of persecutions suffered by the faithful priests, because they would not bow before the revolutionary doctrines; how they refused to violate their oaths, and devoted themselves for the salvation of souls; when we see how they were massacred,

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sent to the galleys, transported to desert islands, in punishment of their pretended crimes; how they endured tortures, compared with which the guillotine would have been a welcome festival; and that not one priest only, nor ten, nor twenty, nor hundreds, but thousands confronted those horrors; then we may look at the future in all security." But are all these assertions equally true? And does the security of which the Countess speaks indeed rest upon the basis she supposes ? A short examination of Dr de Pressensé's work may perhaps enable us the better to answer those questions.

In order fully to understand the part taken by the Church of Rome in the French Revolution, we must go as far back as the debates of the Constituent Assembly. In the midst of the general enthusiasm, what was the attitude of the clergy? The bishop of Nancy preached the sermon of inauguration of the States General, amid the applause of his audience, in the church of St Louis at Versailles. At the Assembly, the clergy demanded the destruction of the state prison, the publicity of all the debates, an annual meeting of the States General, and the abolition of slavery. Alas! why did this pretended liberalism stop short before the exorbitant privileges of the clergy themselves, and why did they insist upon the maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion, with all its prerogatives, as the religion of the State in France ? Little did they think at what price they would one day have to pay for their resistance! First of all, the tithes were taken from them, and then began the debate upon liberty of worship. "I entreat those," said Mirabeau, who, by their fears, anticipate the disorders that would ravage the kingdom were liberty of worship introduced, to consider that tolerance (to use the consecrated word) has not produced poisonous fruits among our neighbours, and that the protestants, inevitably damned in the other world, as every one knows, manage to get on passably well in this one, doubtless by way of a compensation, due to the goodness of the Supreme Being.' The Assembly voted rather a vague and arbitrary article; but still the Church ceased to be an order in the state, and the heretic Rabaut St Etienne could plead in favour of the rights of a whole people of proscripts, including the Jews; and Mirabeau could write in the Courrier de Provence, "The religion we have received from our nurse is quite indifferent to us, and a belief founded upon authority is merely a surface, and has no roots."

* De Rome à Jérusalem, Paris, 1863, p. 143.