the might and efficacy of Christ's Cross; whether I disbelieve in His advocacy, and intercession, and eternal priesthood; whether I measure the glory and the end of His Sacrifice by some paltry notions of my own; whether I ask the Bible to confirm those notions, or to deliver me from them; whether I am introducing a cowardly philosophy' which shrinks from the thought of God as a punisher and as a judge; whether I am guilty of dishonesty' in using words in some sense of my own, not in the sense in which God's word and His Church have used them; whether I am one of those accursed men who rob the world of the Gospel which God has sent them to proclaim in it, and substitute another of their own. I have tried to speak of Sacrifice under every aspect in which the Bible presents it. If I have not connected it with the adjective Vicarious, which is so favourite a one in modern theology, the reason is that I did not find that word in the Bible. Nor does it occur once in our Thirty-nine Articles. Nevertheless, I do not object to the word. It may have, I conceive, an excellent meaning. If, when we call Christ a Vicar, we understand what the Scripture understands when it calls Him a Redeemer, a Reconciler, an Advocate, a Priest, a Mediator, a Son; if when we call His Sacrifice a vicarious one, we understand what the Scripture understands when it says that He was set forth as a propitiation, that He bore the sins of the world, that He was made a curse, that He was made sin; then I hold that He is a Vicar, and that His sacrifice is vicarious in the fullest sense; for I only complain of those who would evade or dilute the force of these expressions. But if a meaning is attached to Vicar or vicarious, which is not in harmony with this language, most assuredly I reject that meaning, and have taken some pains to show how mischievous it has been. I preached these Sermons with an oppressive feeling that a crisis may be at hand which will try us all of what sort we are: which will show whether we believe in God or are Atheists; whether we worship Him or the devil. But I preached them also with a strong and ever growing conviction, that if some of the notions of sacrifice which prevail among us are doing more than anything else to separate us from God and from each other, the true Sacrifice, which was made once for all, will be found to be a bond of peace between God and man, and between all the different tribes, races, and sects of men. In that bond may you and I be united for ever. Your Friend and Well-wisher, F. D. MAURICE. SERMON I. THE SACRIFICES OF CAIN AND ABEL. (Lincoln's Inn, Quinquagesima Sunday, Feb. 26, 1854.) GENESIS IV. 3-7. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect, And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.' I BELIEVE the teaching of the Bible on the subject of Sacrifice is very methodical. By mixing together texts concerning it, which are taken at random from any book between Genesis and the Apocalypse, we confuse our minds, and often end with holding the notions which we should have held if no such words had been written. Perhaps, if we have sufficient reverence for the book to follow in the steps which it marks out for us, we may learn something from it. We shall not B |