come down through long ages; and not bearing only, but bearing it away. For as in those solemn and stately works of ancient art to which I alluded, mild breaths of reconciliation seem to make themselves felt, when once the curse has lighted, the expiation has been made-not otherwise, and only far more gloriously, does the deep inner connexion between the judgment of the world and the forgiveness of the world appear in that death of Christ, which was at once judgment and forgiveness, in which the world was condemned, and in which, being condemned, the world was also forgiven.

But another evidence of the sacrifice of Christ, as that to which the world had been tending, lay in the endeavour of those who, after that sacrifice had been finished, would not accept it, to substitute something else of the same kind in its room. They felt that only so could they stand their ground, could they recover or maintain any hold upon the hearts of men. With what monstrous exaggerations the idea and practice of sacrifice re-appeared in the final struggle of Paganism with the Christian faith, is abundantly known to every student of Church history. The apostate Julian, for instance, of whose life the revival of Paganism was the ruling passion, ran here into extremes which earned him the ridicule of the more lukewarm adherents of the old superstition themselves ;* and he, the same who had trod

* See the manner in which the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 12) speaks of the prodigality of his sacrifices. Victimarius was the title which was given him at Antioch, not apparently by the Christians alone.

under foot the cross of Christ, and counted the blood with which he was sanctified a common thing, did yet submit himself to loathsome rites,* seeking in the blood of bulls profusely poured on him, as in a cleansing bath, that purifying which he had refused to find in the precious blood-sprinkling of the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world.

Again, the inner necessity of having somewhere a sacrifice to rest on, the certainty that if men have not the true, they will generate a substitute in its room, was signally proved by the manner in which the doctrine concerning the mass grew up in the Christian Church itself. No sooner did men's faith in a finished sacrifice, one lying at the ground of every prayer, every act of self-oblation, every acceptable work, grow weak, than the feeling that they must have a sacrifice somewhere, produced, or, so to speak, by instinct developed, a doctrine to answer their needs-turning that Holy Eucharist, which is the ever-present witness and memorial in the Church of a sacrifice once completed on the cross, and continually pleaded in heaven,-turning that itself into the sacrifice, and seeking to supply by these poor but continual repetitions, the weakness of their faith in the one priceless offering, upon the acceptance of which, as upon an unchangeable basis, the Church everlastingly reposes.

*

And now, brethren, by way of practical conclusion

Those of the tauroboliad. Prudentius (Peristeph. 10, 1006-1050) gives a description at large of this revolting rite.

from all this on which we have been entering to-day —what a witness is there here against that shallow view of God's truth, which would leave it a bare doctrine, a system of morals, lopping away as superfluous and mystical, as a remnant of Judaism, all which speaks of atonement, of propitiation, of bloodsprinkling, of sacrifice. The contemplation of the benefits of Christ's death under aspects suggested by these words, so far from being this shred of Judaism, which a more perfect knowledge must strip off, finds on the contrary as many anticipations everywhere else as it does there. They are as busy about sacrifice in the outer court of the Gentiles, as in the holier place of the Jew; and as little there as here is it a separable accident, the garniture and fringe of something else, but in either case itself constituting the substance and centre of worship, recognized in a thousand ways as that which must lie at the ground of all approaches unto God.

And these things being so, how can we escape from owning that some of the deepest, the most universal needs of the human heart have not yet been awakened in us, if we have never yet desired to stand under the cross, nor ever claimed our part in the great oblation which was made thereon, as on the holiest altar ever reared upon the earth-needs which that transcendent offering on Calvary was meant for ever and perfectly to satisfy? It is plain, brethren, that we are leading an outside life, playing but with the surfaces of things, never having brought ourselves in contact with inmost realities, that there never yet has risen upon our souls the awful vision of an holy

God, that we have wholly shrunk from looking down into the abysmal deeps of our own corruption, if as yet we have never cried, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." For when once we have learned aught of this, we then surely feel that not amendment of life, that not tears of sorrow, that not the most perfect baptism of repentance, that not all these together, would of themselves reach our needs, or remove our stains, or give peace for the past, or confidence for the future; that only in the Lamb slain is there purity, or pardon, or peace.

Oh then, let us hasten thither, where we may make that precious blood-sprinkling our own; let us hasten thither, lest they rise up against us in the last day-those heathens, who set such a price on their sacrifices, which were at best but shadows of the true; who made by them such continual acknowledgment of guilt which they had contracted, of punishment which they deserved, of reconciliation. which they desired; lest they rise up, condemning us, who shall have counted the blood with which we were sanctified a common thing, and shall have brought into the awful presence of the Judge a conscience stained and defiled, which yet might have been purged and for ever perfected by far better sacrifices than theirs.

LECTURE V.

THE RESTORER OF PARADISE.

GENESIS V. 29.

And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.

A WORD or two may be needful on commencing again these lectures, which, after the lapse of some months, I am permitted to resume; I may thus hope to remind such among my present hearers as have heard the earlier discourses, and inform such as have not, what has been their course, and what the road we hitherto have travelled over. I have undertaken, then, to trace in a few leading lines the yearnings of the world which was before Christ, or which, though subsequent to Him, has yet lain without the limits of Christendom, and beyond the mighty influences of his word and Spirit,-a world to which He was still therefore a Saviour to come-to trace, I say, the yearnings of this whole world after its Redeemer, and the presentiments of Him which it cherished. I have sought to show that if there was much in the world, as in a fallen world there needs must have been, ready to resist and oppose the coming in of the truth, prompt to take up arms against it at its