is head therefore, man, the image of His glory, is head in the human sphere; and a man and not a woman, the Saviour; and, therefore, a male and not a female animal, to be chosen from the herd as his type.

As we

The offerer, bringing "a burnt sacrifice of the herd-a male without blemish" (in typification of the perfect obedience of Christ) was to "put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering" - at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation, with the assurance that it should "be accepted for him to make atonement for him (Lev. i. 4). Putting his hand on the animal's head was an act of identification. read in another case: "Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness (Lev. xvi. 21). For the offerer, therefore, to "put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering" was to transfer himself to the sacrifice, as it were, and to acknowledge himself justly dealt with in whatever should befall the animal. He was then to "kill the bullock," and the priests were to sprinkle the blood upon the altar, and to cut up the body and place the severed pieces on the altar for consumption.

Paul says (Heb. x. 4): "The blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin," but "it was a figure for the time then present" of the "one offering” that could and did, even "the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (x. 10) memorialized in the breaking of bread my body given for you":"my blood shed for the remission of the sins of many." We identify ourselves with "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world" when we are baptised into his death." We confess our sins, and offer ourselves to God in him, and are forgiven for his sake, in whose crucifixiou "sin was condemned in the flesh" in the shedding of whose blood, "the righteousness of God was declared." The testimony of the apostolic word is that it was so (Rom. viii. 3: 25-26); and the fact that Jesus was the seed of David according to the flesh shows us how it could be so. Here we should rest in " faith in his blood." There is a danger of men reasoning themselves out of the verities of the Gospel by using their own thoughts as natural men against the appointments of God.

The same routine was to be observed in the case of a sheep or goat (Lev. i. 10). It was to be a male without blemish-fit type of the man without sin. The inwards and legs were to be washed with water before offering, which points to preparation for sacrifice. The Lord was prepared for sacrifice during the 33 years of his mortal life. The washing with water we saw in the type of Aaron to be the type of the

cleansing operation of the Spirit-in power and in doctrine. Applied to the inwards, it signified the purification of the heart, or "inner man": applied to the legs, the making clean of the life or "walk and conversation."

That the Lord should be the subject of such a process is foreign to the thoughts of such as have derived their ideas from the idealisms of Romish and Protestant theology: but it is the teaching of the word both in type and antitype-in psalms and prophecy-as we have already seen. The Lord Jesus was human nature taken hold of by the Spirit, and morally washed both in the act of his begettal and in the moral operation in his mental development afterwards, while physically Adam's nature unchanged. Thus washed as to mind, while the heir of death as to nature, he was fitted, in the arrangements of God, to perform that wonderful achievement of destroying through death, that having the power of death, and delivering them (believing in him) who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. ii. 14). If men have a difficulty in understanding this, it is not a wonder, considering that it is a divine arrangement with divine aims-both of which are liable to be unintelligible to the mere mind of the flesh.

If the burnt sacrifice were to be of feathered creatures, a turtle dove or young pigeon might be brought (Lev. i. 14)-fitting type in their harmlessness, of the Son of God-"holy, harmless, and undefiled"— which a vulture or an eagle or an owl would not have been.. Death (the appointed necessity in the case) was to be inflicted instantaneously in the wringing off of the head- —a violent wrench, but succeeded in a moment by the healing balm of unconsciousness. (The Lord's sufferings were intense, but short-lived.) The creature's blood was to be wrung out by the side of the altar (the indispensable element of every sacrifice). "The blood is the life": "without the shedding of blood, no remission of sin," because "the wages of sin is death," and “all have sinned," except the sacrificial man, the Son of God, who is touched only indirectly-by descent from Adam, as to nature: by the mode of his death, as to law and touched so, that he might die for us.

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Angel or beast or un-Adamic man could not "die for us," because the dying was not to be a punishing the innocent in the room of the guilty, but an establishing of the divine supremacy in righteousness as the basis of favour in forgiveness in the case of all such as see and believe and submit. The idea may be subtle but not invisible to spiritual discernment. If only few understand it, it is only because the majority judge of it as a transaction between man and man, instead of the high etiquette of heaven in receiving sinners unto life eternal.

'Crop and feathers were to be cast aside among the ashes as the mere adjuncts of life before sacrifice--temporary and not needed in sacrifice—such as the Lord's clothing distributed among Pagan soldiers, or his occupation as a carpenter, or his flesh-relation to the family of Mary-cast all aside when the moment came to lay down his life. All these belong to "the place of the ashes" in the widest sense.

The body was to be cloven but not parted asunder-in token that the Lord's sacrifice was only to be carried as far as the spiritual requirements of the case required: crucifixion, but not bodily destruction wounds, but not mutilation blood-shedding, but no bonebreaking death, but no disappearance in a dishonoured grave, as would have been the case had the Lord's body been cast in the ordinary course into the local Gehenna as that of a condemned criminal.

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The whole process of the Lord's death and burial was so guarded as (while giving to mankind every security as to the fact of his death, and every evidence of a complete conformity to the law of sacrifice, as a shedding of blood for the remission of sins), to fence off all needless humiliation or outrage. A short three days in a new and honourable tomb, and then the body that had been impaled revived in healing life, without having experienced dismemberment or disintegration, or the humiliation of decomposition. Changed by the Spirit, it ascended to the Father, a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord."

CHAPTER XXIV. -MEAT-OFFERINGS AND PEACE-OFFERINGS.

T was one of many pleasing features of the system of divine service established by the law of Moses that a man could give

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to God a portion of what he (the man) required for his own peculiar use: that is, if he felt moved to do so by a sense of gratitude or desire to do special honour to God. Some things were compulsory, but this was not: it was left to the spontaneous action of love, while yet enjoined as a thing expedient: "Honour the Lord with thy substance, and the first-fruits of all thine increase." Room was made for meat-offerings: that is, food-offerings-offerings of "fine flour," "cakes of fine flour," whether "baken in the oven

or

in a frying pan (Lev. ii. 1, 4, 5, and 7).

or pan, or fried

There is something very beautiful in this idea of a man making God a partaker of the man's own plenty. How agreeable to social feeling for friend to send to friend a portion from one's own table: what closer act of communion could there be? How pleasing that a man should be able to do this with God. He might truly feel as David expressed himself in a larger matter, "Of thine own have we given unto thee." Still, in a sense, God parts with His property in a thing when He gives it to a man: and, therefore. He puts it into the man's power to indulge the pure pleasure of making a gift to God. Such a gift offered in an enlightened spirit would be a source of the highest pleasure it is possible for a created being to enjoy. It is like having God a guest at your own table. But how could such a thing be? It would seem in the nature of things impossible. Man could not have imagined how it could be done unless God had revealed the way. He did so in the Mosaic type of meat-offerings, in the ordinances of which we learn some excellent lessons for our own case.

1. Every meat-offering was to be brought to the altar by the priest (verse 8). Not otherwise could the Israelite offer an acceptable gift to God. Not otherwise could he take God into his domestic fellowship by food-offering. This was easy to understand in the literal and typical. It would be easy to understand in the antitypical if it were not for the obscuring fogs of human thought and sentiment. Christ is both priest and altar man has no standing apart from him. A man cannot offer acceptable gifts to God except through and in him. Christ is THE WAY, as he proclaimed, "There is none other name

He

under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." There is no other way of approach to God. A man is not fit to approach on his own merit. He is an unjustified sinner till clothed with the name of Christ in the belief and obedience of the truth. He is not acceptable till then. He is like a person under displeasure at court. is not fit to offer gifts. Let men give themselves first in acceptable reconciliation, and then their gifts will be acceptable on the altar. They are not acceptable away from the altar: and they cannot be offered on the altar (Christ) unless the priest (Christ) put them there; and this he will only do for those who become members of his household by incorporation with his name.

2. Every meat-offering had to be almost drowned in oil; which, as we have seen, is the type of joy. "Serve the Lord with gladness," "The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." A gift given to God with regret, or with only half a heart, lacks an important condition of acceptability. Joy belongs to God. "Strength and gladness are in his presence." The constant summons to His people is to " Rejoice." “Be glad in the Lord, ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye upright in heart." His purpose is to impart everlasting joy to His redeemed. If He puts them to grief now, it is only that they may be prepared. "He doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men. He does not intend sorrow to "sullen o'er the sombre sky" for ever, even now. He has no pleasure in penances and asceticisms. "Is this the fast that, I have chosen," saith He, "a day for a man to afflict his soul, to bow down his head like a bulrush, to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I have chosen-to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free?" (Isaiah lviii. 5). It is only where the wickedness of neglecting Him prevails—when "there is no truth nor mercy nor knowledge of God in the land "that the Lord God calls for "fasting, with weeping and mourning," telling the sinners to "be afflicted and mourn and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness." To those who serve Him in love, He is a sun and shield-a fortress and a high tower-the rock of their salvation-in whom they are called upon to rejoice. Their meat-offerings were liable to be sad if not soaked in oil. Good things He "hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them who believe and know the truth” (1 Tim. iv. 3). "He giveth them all things richly to enjoy " (1 Tim. vi. 17). Therefore, they have nothing in common with the gloomy religion of the cloister and the cell. They are God's free and glad men who rejoice in His bounty and render back to Him, through Christ, free-will offerings soaked in oil.