all that Faith needed on which to rest. Faith did rest upon it. Sacrifice was the great type appointed,--Sacrifice with Blood. Men received it, observed it, and looked for the coming Deliverer. Not only Cain, and Abel, and Noah, and Melchisedek, and Abraham, and the Jews, sacrificed, but all Nations observed the Rite. Everywhere the doctrine of Expiation by Blood was accepted.* Men had been taught, with more or less distinctness, to find in this Institution an answer to the deep questionings and yearnings of their own spiritual nature. And there was throughout all the East, the ancient home of the highest civilization, a universal looking forward to the coming of One Whom these Sacrifices foreshadowed, and Who thus was the DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. Job, Balaam, and Abraham, saw Him distinctly. The Magi, who represented the learning and wisdom of the East, knew at once the meaning of the Star which Balaam had already described, and they came, with royal gifts, to worship. Tacitus, and Suetonius, and the Heathen Poets, bear testimony to the universal waiting of the Nations, to what Archbishop Trench calls the "Unconscious Prophecy of Heathendom."

Now, as to the origin of this Institution, Sacrifice with Blood, there is but one explanation. Mere human philosophy never has shown, and never can show, that there is any natural connection between Sacrifices with Blood, and the Forgiveness of Sin. The mystery, so deep that angels cannot fathom it, is only so far solved now, and for us, in that we are pointed to Him Who was, and is, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world;" the Great High Priest; Himself both the Priest and the Sacrifice; "Who offered Himself without spot to God;" (Heb. ix. 14 ;) and Who, "after he had offered one Sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God." (Heb. x. 12.) But what the exact nature of that Sacrifice was, philosophy knows, as little now, as Abel, and Abraham. knew; though Schisms and Heresies, and blasphemies, almost innumerable, ancient and modern, have been, and still are, the

* For full proof of the universal prevalence of Sacrifices with Blood, see Magee's Discourses on Atonement and Sacrifice, pp. 67-84.

fruit of the ceaseless attempt to be wise above what is written. Hence, we have Calvinism, and Socinianism, and the other modern isms, down to Bushnellism.

But besides this great Sin-Offering, there have always been required Offerings of another character; Sacrifices, not to take away sin; Sacrifices made acceptable to God through the allsufficient merits of the One great Sin-Offering. It is a great mistake, and yet a common one, to suppose that the word Sacrifice always and of necessity denotes a bloody or propitiatory Offering for Sin. On the contrary, the Hebrew word minchah, signifying Sacrifice, and the Greek word vera, thusia, by which the Seventy translated the Hebrew word in more than a hundred instances, denote Offerings in general, whether Bloody or Unbloody, whether for Sin, or of Praise and Thanksgiving.

This kind of offering, too, is universal. It proves itself, by such acceptance, to accord with the instincts and sentiments of men, at all times, in all places, and under every variety of circumstances, and every shade of civilization. And, as everything offered up to God is a Sacrifice, in the true and proper sense of the term, so a Sacrifice implies an Altar and a Priesthood. In this perpetual Order of Priesthood, an Order in its origin antedating the Priesthood of Levi and of Abraham, -an Order unchanged in its essential features in all these succeeding Dispensations, and so "having neither beginning of days nor end of life," we see a perpetual type of the Great High Priest, Jesus Christ. Here, too, we understand the meaning of the inspired Psalmist, in that wonderful Messianic prediction, "The Lord sware, and will not repent, Thou art a Priest forever, after the Order of Melchisedek."

This conception of Sacrifice, as an elementary principle of all Religion, as entering, of necessity, into the very nature of Worship, belongs also to Christianity.

The prophet Malachi, ere he closes the sacred record of the old Dispensation, declares, in that sublime passage :

"From the rising of the sun, even to the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto My name and a pure offering; for My name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts." Mal. i. 2.

As the Septuagint was in the hands of our Saviour and His Apostles, and was by them in constant use, so its language, or term signifying Sacrifice, was frequently applied to various acts of Christian Worship and devotion, by the inspired writers of the New Testament. To the Hebrews, the Apostle writes:

"By Him, therefore, let us offer the Sacrifice, Ovorav thusian of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name." Heb. xiii. 5.

"We have an Altar; whereof they have no right to eat which serve the Tabernacle, *** by Him, therefore let us offer the Sacrifice Thusian, of praise to God continually; that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name." Heb. xiii. 10, 15.

The word Sacrifice is also applied to good works, and especially to deeds of charity :

"To do good and to communicate, forget not, for with such Sacrifices Thusiais, God is well pleased." Heb. xiii. 16.

The term Sacrifice is also applied to the act of self-dedication to God. St. Paul, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of both the Old and New Dispensations, said :—

"I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living Sacrifice, thusian zosan, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." (Rom. xii. 1.)

To the Corinthians he wrote :—

"Ye cannot drink the Cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's Table, and the table of devils." (1 Cor. x. 21.

Language which, of necessity, involves the whole idea of Altar, Priest and Sacrifice, and is a mere quibble or play upon words under any other interpretation.

To Cornelius the Angel of God said, in a vision:

Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God." (Acts x. 4.)

The Sacrificial character of Prayer is more distinctly declared by the Apostle St. John, in his vision; when the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, came and took the book, and

"The four beasts and four and twenty elders, fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials, full of odors, which are the prayers of saints." (Rev. v. 5, 8.)

And, after this,

"Another Angel came and stood at the Altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints, upon the golden Altar, which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God, out of the Angel's hand." (Rev. viii. 3 and 4.)

St. Peter also declares, distinctly, that the Offering of Sacrifice is a feature of the Christian Dispensation. To the Jews, scattered abroad, he says:—

"Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot; Who verily was pre-ordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for you. To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious. Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an Holy Priesthood, to offer up Spiritual Sacrifices, acceptable to God, by Jesus Christ." 1st Pet. i. 18-20, and II.

4 and 5.

We have testimony stronger even than all this. One greater than St. Paul, and St. Peter, and St. John, said :

"Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, Thusiasterion and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the Altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.' St. Matt. v. 23, 24.

The whole Psalter, which the Blessed Saviour constantly used, and commended to the employment of His Church, is full, throughout, of this idea of Priest, Altar and Sacrifice.

Such, in brief, is the argument, that Sacrifice belongs to the Christian Church. Indeed, as self-sacrifice to GoD is a fundamental principle in all true Religion with all orders of moral beings, so self-sacrifice to God, through Jesus Christ, is the cardinal element of the Christian Religion, and is both the law and the measure of the Christian Life. How this great rule differs from the first axiom of modern New England Theology, to wit: that Man's happiness is his ruling motive, and that he serves God in preference to serving the devil, be

cause it "pays,"-we shall not stop to discuss. But it does differ completely. The two Systems are wide apart as Heaven and Earth. Sacrifice, as an idea, a principle, a duty, runs throughout the whole System of Christianity. The entire abnegation of self, and the complete surrender of one's whole being, body and soul, to Christ, is the essential characteristic of the Christian. "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life, for my sake, shall find it." St. Matt. x. 39. Alms, prayer, praise, confession, intercession; selfdenial of ease, pleasure, honor, position; the enduring of affliction, hardship, reproach, persecution, if need be,—all this, as an Offering to God, and acceptable to Him through Jesus Christ, hath the true nature of a Sacrifice.

Practically, the principle is one of unspeakable value and importance. See how it hallows and dignifies the lowliest and most revolting duties; how it sweetens the bitterest cup; how it intensifies faith, and gives importunity to prayer; how it nerves and animates the private Christian, the Minister, and the Missionary, with the boldness of a martyr spirit; how it is the surety of success, and of final victory, even amid apparent failure,-to feel and know that all this is a Sacrifice well pleasing to God. Without this solace, the Christian may submit unmurmuringly to hardship, and trial, because God lays the heavy load upon him. But how differently the burden seems, when he may feel, that he thus knows what is meant by "the fellowship of Christ's sufferings," and that he is thus identified with Him in all His earthly life, of toil and ignominy and sacrifice now, and that he shall be identified with Him in the glory which awaits His mystical Body hereafter. None can read the Earlier Christian Fathers, without being struck with the constant presence of this vital truth, their deep consciousness of the perfect oneness of the Christian with Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church; nor can he fail to note the striking contrast to all this, in the teachings of our superficial modern theology. And yet, Sacrifice, in all its forms, as we have said again and again, is acceptable to God alone through the One great Atoning Sacrifice of the Cross.

Now, if there be this Sacrificial character in Christian Wor