it is obvious, would have been lost, had any formal explanation been appended to the symbol. For the same reason our Lord spake in parables : by the careless the meaning was missed; the serious and attentive had their curiosity awakened, and eventually rewarded.

If the foregoing observations be well-grounded, we shall neither ascribe to the pious Jew a distinct recognition in his sacrifices of the atoning work of Christ, a supposition burdened with many difficulties; nor, on the other hand, a mere mechanical performance of a dumb ceremonial; but we shall suppose, that while the typical import of his ritual was, for the wisest purposes, veiled from him until He came in whom the Law found its fulfilment, as a system of symbols, of representation by action, as Warburton calls it, it was a vehicle of religious instruction wherever it encountered suitable dispositions of mind. And I have dwelt the more fully on the subject, both because some aid may thereby be furnished towards the solution of the difficult question, how far the Jew understood his own ritual, and because the point of view from which in this discourse we are contemplating the Levitical appointments will be the better perceived.

P Div. Leg. b. iv. §. 4.

The above observations must be understood as applying to the ceremonial law, considered by itself and apart from prophecy. The law, however expressive as a system of

We are to conceive then that the New Testament had never been written, or had perished, and to endeavour to gather the leading ideas which either from its mute symbolism, or from hints contained in the Law, (for on the symbolical meaning of its own ordinances the Law is not altogether silent), the Levitical sacrificial system seems to embody.

The general import of this system is best gathered from the chief ends of the Theocracy itself; for, as has been well observed, what the latter was as a whole, the Levitical appointments in question were in particular'; in these the design of the whole economy appears in a concentrated form. Now from the passages adduced in the preceding discourse we learn, that the separation of the Israelites took place in order that they might be a holy nation, consecrated to the special service of God: "The Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people,that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God." But the holiness of the creature can only be a derivative one, it is an emanation from the absolute source of holiness; it implies therefore an existing connexion, or fellowship, with God.

symbols, contains no hint of its typical import. But, as will be shewn hereafter (Lecture VI.), the effect of the law and prophecy combined must have been such as almost to force the typical reference on the observation of the inquirer.

Bähr, Symbolik des Mos. Cult. vol. ii. p. 190.

In the case of the fallen creature this fellowship has been interrupted; here then its restoration, as in the upright creature its maintenance, is the problem, and the difficulty. In the first place, God must stoop to connect Himself with the wandering outcast, must take the initiative in the work of reconciliation; for since the day that our first parents hid themselves among the trees of the garden, guilt shuns the Divine Presence, and prefers darkness to light. In the next place, the true character of God, and the true condition of man, must suffer no obscuration in the process; this were to film over the disease, not to cure it: the heathen religions could never be ethical, could never be training schools of piety, because in them neither was the absolute holiness of God, nor the sinfulness of man, inculcated as first principles of religion. True religion then, whether it appear clothed in the preparatory symbolism of the Law, or in its more perfect form under the Gospel, must exhibit in strong relief the truths, that sin has made a separation between God and man, and that, though reconciliation is not hopeless, the means of repairing the breach must proceed not from the creature, but from the Creator.

How strongly these lessons were impressed under the Mosaic economy we all know; indeed it is the predominance of its ethical character that distinguishes this religion from all others of antiquity. The God who, in such a concrete form,

presented Himself to the Hebrew as a Person not an influence, as Spirit not matter, as the sole object of worship, not one of the Lords many and Gods many of heathenism, is the absolutely Holy One; "ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." He connects Himself by covenant with a certain people, takes up His abode among them, reveals Himself to them, makes them, in short, as distinguished from other nations, a kingdom of priests', of those, that is, to whom a peculiar privilege of nearness to the Divine Presence is vouchsafed. But this favoured people is not allowed to forget, that it is in no way exempt from the sinfulness, original and actual, which is the common inheritance of the race; on the contrary, the conviction of this painful truth is in an especial manner impressed on the Jewish mind. If the principle of the Mosaic polity was to work from without inwards, the import of all its ordinances was, the unfitness of man in his natural state to appear before a holy God. To such an extent was this symbolically inculcated, that natural conditions of the body, natural in its fallen state, became theocratical disqualifications, and excluded from the camp of Israel. Birth, death, and the connecting link between the two, sickness, in its highest form of leprosy, were all to the Jew associated with sin; by natural generation sinful beings are propagated, sickness and

s Levit. xix. 2.

t Exod. xix. 6.

death are the consequences of sin; all therefore communicated ceremonial uncleanness, which could only be removed by appointed rites of purification".

These ideas, which pervade the whole of the ceremonial law, find their culmination in the institutions which we are more immediately considering. God dwells among His chosen people; but even this kingdom of priests cannot approach the Divine Majesty, save through the intervention of persons set apart for that office; nor can they offer acceptable worship, without being first purged from their natural uncleanness, whether general, or arising from particular transgressions. Even the inanimate instruments of divine worship, the tabernacle, the altar, the holy place, the garments of the sacred persons, are, on account of their connexion and contact with the people, regarded as unclean, and as needing to be purified to fit them for holy uses. The mediating persons are priests; the cleansing ceremony is sacrifice.

The Levitical priesthood does not differ essentially from the same institution as it meets us in other religions of antiquity, In all religions we find priesthood, as we do sacrifices, and in all it has sprung from the same feeling. Together with the idea of God, however rude and imperfect, arises the consciousness of the infinite distance between man and God, and a desire to fill up the interval with an intermediate order, which, con