comes from Thee. To Thee I owe my life and all that I possess! I have, indeed, deserved death at Thy hands, but as Thou dost not require of me my life, I offer to Thee instead the life of this lamb.” The bloody sacrifices were sacrifices of vicarious expiation, and for this reason the person who offered it laid his hand on the head of the victim, as a token that he laid his sins on it, and sacrificed it as a substitute for himself. Therefore the only animals which could be offered up were the domestic animals which are useful and valuable to man.
The ends of sacrifice. By sacrifices men were 1. taught that they depended absolutely on God, and owed Him worship and thanksgiving as their supreme Lord; 2. they were roused to a consciousness that they were sinners before God, and owed satisfaction to the divine justice; 3. they were shown that they, of themselves, could not make satisfaction, but required a mediator.
In what lay the efficacy of sacrifice? Could pardon and inward sanctification be obtained through the blood of beasts which themselves were not clean, but lay under the curse which Adam’s sin had brought on the earth ? No! these sacrifices could only effect an outward justice, and a legal purification by which those who offered the sacrifice were made clean in the eyes of the law, and were enabled once more to take part in the public worship of God. But in so far as these sacrifices were types of the one atoning Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and pointed to this only source of grace and pardon, they could effect sanctification and pardon, provided he who offered the sacrifice believed in the future Saviour, and repented of his sins. This faith, this hope, and this repentance were expressed and stimulated by sacrifice; and, in virtue of this intention , he who offered it received pardon and grace.
The chief significance of the Old Testament sacrifices lay in their being types of the most holy and world-redeeming Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The bloody sacrifices were typical of His bloody Sacrifice on the Cross; the unbloody sacrifices were typical of the holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and the meat-offerings, of Holy Communion. All the sacrifices of the Old Law found their fulfilment in the Sacrifice of our Lord, because, firstly, His was a real vicarious sacrifice, and, secondly, it had infinite efficacy to blot out all sin, and win grace for all men. It was a real vicarious sacrifice, for Jesus Christ is truly man, and took the sins of His brethren upon Him. It had infinite efficacy, because Jesus
