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we to follow the former mode of interpretation, and take all these phrases in their strictly literal sense, we must be persuaded to believe that God, not being contented with the blood of bulls and goats, and other animal sacrifices, offered to him by the Israelites, insisted upon the offer of the blood and life of his Son, as the condition of his forgiving the sins of men; and that Jesus accordingly offered his blood to propitiate God, and also proposed to men actually to eat his flesh! Would not the doctrines of Christianity, in this case, representing God as delighted with human victims, and directing men to cannibalism, appear monstrous to every civilized being? No ⚫ne, unless biassed by prejudices, can justify such inconsistency, as to interpret literally some of the above-mentioned phrases in support of the doctrine of the atonement, and explain the last quoted figuratively, as they are all confessedly alike subversive of every rational idea of the nature of the divine justice and mercy.

To avoid such a stigma upon the pure religion of Jesus, it is incumbent, I think, upon us to follow the latter mode of interpretation, and to understand, from the passages referred to, that Jesus, the spiritual Lord and King of Jews and Gentiles, in fulfilment of the duties of his mission, exposed his own life for the benefit of his subjects, purged their sins by his doctrines, and persevered in executing the commands of God, even to the undergoing of bodily suffering in the miserable death of the cross; a self-devotion or sacrifice, of which no Jewish high priest had ever offered an example.

Ought not this belief in the unbounded beneficence of Jesus to excite superior gratitude, love, and reverence towards our Saviour and King, than the idea that he, as God, above mortal afflictions, borrowed human nature for a season, and offered this fictitious man as a sacrifice for the remission of sin, while he himself was no more afflicted with that sacrificial death than with the sufferings of other human individuals.. If there be, in this latter case, any gratitude felt for the afflictions which attached to the death of the cross, it should be manifested to that temporary man Jesus, and not to Jesus the Christ, whom the Editor and other Trinitarians esteem as God, above pain and death.

If it be urged, that it is inconsistent with common justice to pardon sin that requires the capital punishment of death without an atonement for it, it may be replied, that the perfection of divine justice, as well as other attributes of God, should not be measured by what are found in, and adopted by, the human race. Is it consistent with our common notions of justice to visit the sins of fathers on their descendants, as God ascribed to himself, (Exodus xx. 5.)? Is it consistent with our common notions of justice to afflict men with infinite punishment for their finite guilt, as Jesus declares in Matthew xviii. 8.? Even in the present case, would it be consistent with common notions of justice to afflict an innocent man with the death of the cross, for sins committed by others even supposing the innocent man should voluntarily offer his life in behalf of those others? We can have no idea of the perfection of divine justice, mer

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cy, and wrath, unless from what is revealed to us; and as we find, in the sacred books, that sins have been pardoned in consequence of the intercession of righteous men, without any sacrificial atonement, we should, therefore, be contented with those authorities, and should not entertain doubt as to pardon being bestowed upon those who have had the advantage of the intercession of Jesus, exalted as he was by God over all prophets and righteous men that ever lived.

Numb. xiv. 19-20:- Moses prayed to the Lord, "Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now; and the Lord said I have pardoned according to thy word." 2 Chron. xxx. 18-20 :--" For a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and Mannasseh, Issachar and Zebulon, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people." Psalm cvi. 23 :-"Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses, his chosen, stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them." Did not Jehovah here forgive the sins of Israel from the intercession of Moses, without having the least reference to the offer of animal or human blood? Psalm xxxii. 5:-" I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid; I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." Were. not sins forgiven in this instance also, through confession and humility without blood-offerings? Psalm cxli. 2 :-" Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the even ing sacrifice." Isaiah lv. 7 :-"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Jer. vii. 21-23 :-" Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Put your burnt-offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices. But this thing commanded I them, saying, obey my voice, and I will be your God and ye shall be my people," &c. Here we find prayers and obedience preferred to animal sacrifices as means of pardon, and no reference, direct or figurative, to propitiation, to be made by human blood. Such an attempt, therefore, as to represent human blood, or that of God in human form, in lieu of animal blood, as an indispensable atonement for sins, is, I think, unscriptural.

The Editor quotes, (page 519,) Heb. x :-" It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me; in burnt-offerings and sacrifices thou hast had no pleasure." And he attempts thereby to prove that "sacrifices, considered in themselves, then, were never desired by God; they are approved merely with a view to his making atonement for whom God had prepared a body," and that "they ceased after he had offered himself a sacrifice for sin." How strange is the idea, that "God, who preserves man and beast, nor suffers a sparrow to fall to the ground without his permission;" and by whom sacrifices "were never desired for their own sake," should have caused millions of animals to be slaughtered, at different times, by men, under the mistaken notion of their being an atonement for sins, while he has been remitting iniquity from eternity, referring only to the real and sufficient atonement made by Jesus for the sins of all men that ever lived from the beginning of the world!

How inconsistent is such an idea with the known mercy of that Providence, whose unwillingness to receive human sacrifices was such, that when Abraham had proved his fidelity by binding his son on the altar, God stayed his hand from the sacrifice, and produced a ram, unexpectedly, before him, which he was graciously pleased to accept as an offering in the stead of Isaac!-(Gen. xxii. 13.) How can we imagine that God should have received the offering which he himself had thus prepared, with reference solely to the future sacrifice of a being far superior in excellence to Isaac, whose life he mercifully preserved?

As to the above cited verses, they rather corroborate the second mode of interpretation, noticed in the preceding paragraphs, than the doctrine of a real human sacrifice in the Christian dispensation; for, in

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