·

woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in child-bearing (or by the child-bearing,' as it is in the original) if they continue," &c. If she was not to be the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world, she was to provide him. "The seed" was to be "her seed." In this way, she was admitted to a close fellowship in the work of redemption. Therefore, the female animal was allowed a place in the subordinate sacrifices, though not eligible for those sacrifices that directly typified the sin-bearing Man

of Sorrow.

Whether a bullock, sheep, or goat, the peace-offering was to be brought by the offerer himself, and not sent by deputy: "His own hands shall bring the offering" (Lev. vii. 30). What can this typify but the hearty humble energy of personal service as contrasted with the modern effeminacies of sentimental pride that can send a cheque from the lordly seclusion of a country-seat, but cannot stoop to a personal condescension. "You know how it is," says Jesus, with the great ones of the Gentiles: it shall not be so among you: he that is great among you let him be as the servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister." Bringing the offering, he was to lay his hand on the animal's head, thus identifying himself with it, in self-condemning humility, and then he was to kill it, and the priest was to sprinkle the blood upon the altar, and cut up the creature for use as a peace-offering: that is, the fatty linings of the interior were to be laid upon the altar-fire and consumed, and the leading joints (the breast and the right shoulder) were to be taken possession of by the officiating priest: "He among the sons of Aaron that offereth the blood of the peace-offerings and the fat shall have the right shoulder for his part. For the wave breast and the heave shoulder have I taken of the children of Israel from off the sacrifices of their peace-offerings and have given them unto Aaron, the priest, and unto his sons by a statute for ever" (Lev. vii. 33-34).

The meanings traced in former articles enable us to discern the significance of these details. The poured-out blood was the cere monial of confession to be observed even in thanksgiving-approachesof which we enjoy the antitype when we draw nigh to God with confession on our lips and the crucified Christ in our hearts-on whom God laid the iniquities of us all, that with his stripes we might be healed. The fat is described as "the food of the offering made by fire for a sweet savour "”—(iii. 16)—that part upon which the altar-fire feeds. If blood means life, it is evident that fat means the strength and goodness of life. When used figuratively, it is always with the sense of prosperity and good condition, e.g., All that are fat upon

earth shall worship," "Thou art waxen fat: thou art grown thick: thou art covered with fatness." Consequently, a man giving his time, his love, his service, his substance, gives the fat of his life. This is "the food of the peace-offering," and ascends as a sweet savour to God. This is the very language almost that Paul uses concerning the munificence of the brethren in the supply of his wants: "I have received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God" (Philip. iv. 18). Christ not only gave his life for us, but for our sakes "impoverished himself "-(a more correct translation than "became poor")—that is, voluntarily submitted to circumstances of poverty and humility when he might not only have had "twelve legions of angels," but "all the kingdoms of the world." He offered the fat as well as the blood. As his followers, we are invited to do the same, though we necessarily follow at a long distance off. The young man looked, but did not follow. He was "grieved, having great possessions."

And what about the house of Aaron having the chief part of the peace-offerings for their own use? The clergy make a very obvious application of this, but their application is the Judaising applicationnot a spiritual interpretation at all, but a mere parallelism—a mere transfer of the temporal privileges of the Mosaic priesthood which is supposed to have succeeded them. They make a type teach itself, which is absurd. The antitypical Aaron and his house is Christ and his house. The offerings signified by the slain animals yield no joints of mutton, but something sweeter to the divine taste of the immortal sons of God-the offered lives and wealth and homage of rejoicing obedient millions. This does not exclude the restoration of sacrifice in the age to come as a detail in the machinery of national reconciliation : but it vaults to a higher and more glorious meaning, at which a Judaised clergy only laugh: "Woe unto you that laugh now."

CHAPTER XXV. -BURNT-OFFERINGS, SIN-OFFERINGS, AND
TRESPASS-OFFERINGS.

T

HESE were compulsory offerings as distinguished from the offerings considered in the last chapter-which were more or less voluntary. That there should be these two classes of offering is an adaptation to spiritual needs. There are appointments of God that are imperative —not at all left to human choice-to be omitted on pain of death. In the observance of these, every enlightened man delights. But it is a great addition to his delight that he can go beyond the actual prescriptions of law, and indulge the sense of his admiring and grateful allegiance by any extravagance of love (as Judas considered Mary's costly ointment of spikenard) with the certainty that it will be accepted. It was the sentiment illustrated in David's case, when, as he sat at his ease in the magnificent palace erected for him by Hiram, he conceived the idea of a more opulent provision for the machinery of the divine service. "Behold I dwell in a house of cedar and the ark of God dwelleth in curtains." He was not permitted to build a temple, but it was said to him, "It was well that it was in thine heart."

There is ample field for every liberal soul who may conceive liberal things in the service of God. By liberal things he shall stand. There are not many to whom liberality occurs in this direction. But the celestial phenomenon is not absolutely unknown. Surprising instances are permitted to break the monotony of carnal stagnation, which even Paul lamented when he said, "All seek their own and not the things which are Jesus Christ's." The rule has not been cancelled which he formulated, thus: "He that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully, and he that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly." A man seems a fool who spends on God. Final developments will show a light on this subject that all men will be able

to see.

The diversity of offerings is a little perplexing at first; and it is some time before we discover the difference between them. They all seem indiscriminately sacrifices-animals to be slain and consumed in the fire of the altar. By-and-bye, we naturally ask, what are burntofferings as distinguished from sin-offerings and trespass-offerings? and why should there be a trespass-offering in addition to a sin-offering,

seeing that trespass is sin? The light gradually dawns.

.

We find they

represent gradations of the same subject. All were for atonement, but atonement for different degrees of sin, as we might express it. There was a form of sin for which there was no atonement. "The soul that doeth aught presumptuously reproacheth the Lord: that soul shall be cut off from among his people, because he hath despised the word of the Lord and hath broken his commandment: that soul shall utterly be cut off: his iniquity shall be upon him" (that is, shall not be purged by sacrifice) (Num. xv. 30-31). But this was not a common case. The common case was sin not of presumption : sin of natural state, sin of ignorance, and sin of weakness: the first, the constitutional uncleanness that has come into the world by sin, which is "no more I but sin that dwelleth in me" (Rom. vii. 20): the second, where men do wrong without knowing it, as in "sin of ignorance": and third, acts of known disobedience, but not deliberate or intentional, but the result of infirmity deplored. For these three phases of sin, the burnt-offering, the sin-offering, and the trespassoffering appear to have been provided, differing in methods and accessories according to the respective cases.

1. THE BURNT-OFFERING.-The burnt-offering was burnt wholly on the altar (Lev. i. 8-9). It was left to smoulder all night into ashes, and the ashes were removed in the morning. It was called the burnt-offering "because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning" (vi. 9). It was an act of worship on the part of a mortal being apart from guilt of specific offence. Thus Noah, saved from destruction by the flood, "took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl and offered burnt-offerings on the altar" (Gen. viii. 20). Thus also the test of Abraham's faith was to offer Isaac "for a burnt-offering" (Gen. xxii. 2). That burnt-offering should be required in the absence of particular offence shows that our unclean state as the death-doomed children of Adam itself unfits us for approach to the Deity apart from the recognition and acknowledgment of which the burnt-offering was the form required and supplied. It was "because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel," as well as "because of their transgressions in all their sins," that atonement was required for even the tabernacle of the congregation (Lev. xvi. 16).

The type involved in complete burning is self-manifest: it is consumption of sin-nature. This is the great promise and prophecy and requirement of every form of the truth: the destruction of the body of sin (Rom. vi. 6). It was destroyed in Christ's crucifixion—the “one great offering": we ceremonially share it in our baptism: "crucified

with Christ," "baptised unto his death." We morally participate in it in putting the old man to death in "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts: " and the hope before us is the prospect of becoming subject to such a physical change as will consume mortal nature and change it into the glorious nature of the Spirit. "We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye!

The whole process of consumption is the work of the Spirit, whether we consider the sending forth of Christ to condemn sin in the flesh, or our association with his death in baptism or our repudiation of the old man as the rule of life, or our change at the judgment seat into the incorruptible and glorious nature of the Son of God. When the work is finished, flesh and blood, with all its weakness and its woe, will have ceased from the earth, and given place to a glad and holy race of men immortal and "equal to the angels." It was a beautiful requirement of the wisdom of God in the beginning of things that He should require an act of worship that typified the repudiation of sinful nature as the basis of divine fellowship and acceptability. Those who deny Christ's participation thereof deny its removal by his sacrifice, and therefore deny the fundamental testimony of the gospel, that he is "the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world." They think they honour him by saying his flesh-nature was a clean nature. In reality, they deny his qualification for the work he was sent to do. They mistake holiness of character for holiness of nature, and by a wrong use of truth, destroy it.

The removal of the ashes in the morning out of the camp, has an evident allusion to the change effected in the dawn of the perfect day, when the unconsumed remnants of sin flesh-that is, the men who are not changed by the Spirit, or consumed by the altar fire-will be "put away like dross." The body of the burnt-offering as the type of Christ might not seem to leave room for the idea of "ashes " if we think only of Christ personal: but when we extend our view to the whole race as federally involved in him, we can see how the treatment of the body of the burnt-offering would typify the purpose of God with regard to the race, and therefore leave a place for the ashes to be removed in the morning.

SIN OFFERINGS. --A sin-offering differed from the burnt-offering in several particulars. It was called for when “ a soul sinned through ignorance against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things that ought not to be done" (Lev. iv. 2). If a priest sinned in the same way or if it was the case of the whole congregation sinning ignorantly, then when the sin was discovered, they were to "bring a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin-offering."