proceed as prescribed in the following language :-" And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness."* It seems obvious, from these words, that the imposition of the priest's hands upon the head of the goat was intended to signify a transfer or imputation to the animal, or to some being represented by the animal, of the sins which had been confessed over its head, and for which a sacrifice had been previously offered; and, moreover, that the sending of the goat into the wilderness, represented the removal of all the guilt of the children of Israel. It will be farther remembered, that the scapegoat is described as having been defiled by this imputation of accumulated iniquity; since the man who had led it away into the wilderness was looked upon as contaminated by that act, and underwent, in consequence, a purifying ablution.

*Lev. xvi. 21, 22

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It appears then to have been most reasonably taken for granted by the Apostle, that the sacrificial rite, whatever additional purposes we may suppose it to have answered, was formally instituted to signify that the remission. of the punishment of the transgressor against God, was the effect of an imputation of his guilt to some other living being substituted in his place for it is difficult to conceive, that the idea of such a mode of acquitting the sinner could have been conveyed in a more determinate form of symbolical action. Thus much, we have said, was assumed by the Apostle, either as a fact already known to those for whom he was writing, or as a fact which would be perceived the instant it was suggested, and assented to without question.* What particular ideas, indeed, the Jews themselves had connected with the rite of sacrifice, we can only gather indirectly from his language, and it is not essential to a Christian apprehension of the purport of that rite to determine. Inasmuch, however, as the law, in its office as a schoolmaster†

* There is evidence, however, that the Jews attached a "vicarious import" to the rite, as is shown by Outram, (lib. i. c. xxii.)

† Gal. iii. 24. The παιδαγωγός was no more than a domestic slave, who had the charge of his master's children; and if he was so called from his accompanying them when

to bring men to Christ, taught its pupils by types and shadows only, the instruction which it conveyed must have been necessarily partial and obscure; and was more so, it is probable, than in the plenitude of our knowledge we are apt to imagine. The import of the prophecies in the Old Testament, we well know, was, in a great measure, a secret at the time they were uttered: so might have been the types under the ancient dispensations. To us, however, the typical significance of the sacrificial rite has been clearly illustrated, as well as embodied in the sacrifice of Christ, and thus it has lent to his pretensions the confirmation of prophecy. But to proceed with the argument of the Apostle

Assuming the rite of sacrifice to signify that the guilt of the offender was imputed to another, and expiated by the death of the

they went from home, whether to school or elsewhere, and was a distinct person from the didáσkaλos, the teacher of the children, (Schleusner), the term "schoolmaster," it appears, cannot properly describe the office of the law as introductory to the Christian dispensation. The import of the passage, "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ," seems to be, not that the law communicated any knowledge respecting Christ, but merely that it was adapted to bring men into such a state of mind as would predispose them to listen to his instructions, and, more particularly, to embrace the offer of pardon through his mediation.

substitute, the Apostle, as we have already stated, argues, from the nature of things, that the import of that rite could not have been substantiated in the rite itself: that the substitution which it symbolized could not have taken place in the sacrifice of an irrational creature:-" It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." Moreover, he alleges that the inherent inefficacy of such sacrifices (whether known or not to those who offered them) and their consequent allusion to some other sacrifice, was deducible from the fact, that they continued year after to be offered. He argues that "the worshippers, once purged, should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year." Accordingly, he regards the law, in enjoining those sacrifices, as having foreshown and prefigured only the privileges which it had the appearance of conferring, and not as having in reality bestowed themin his own words, "having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things."*

year

*Heb. x. 1. By not having "the very image" (avτǹν Tv Eikóva) is clearly meant not having the reality, the substance of the things of which it was a shadow."

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II. And here we are led to observe, that the prophetic character of the ceremonial law in general, and the appointment of sacrifice in particular, as a type or prefiguration of the sacrifice of Christ, are directly asserted in the sacred writings. In proof of this, we shall cite the whole of the passage, to which we adverted at the commencement of this discourse:-"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ."* Now you will observe that the Apostle, in this passage, points to no circumstances of resemblance between the particular ordinances to which he refers, and those of Christianity; but, clearly, instructs the professors of the Gospel to account them as no longer binding, for this reason—that, as they were originally appointed to be "a shadow of things to come," and had received their realization and fulfilment in Jesus Christ, they had answered the end for which they had been instituted, and had ceased to be of farther use. Language could hardly have been more decisive of the general fact, that the external ordinances, or the ceremonial *Col. ii. 16.