_THE RELATION OF OLD TESTAMENT SACRIFICE TO CHRISTIANITY_
But it may be asked, What is the relation of this Divinely
sanctioned ritual law of sacrifice to our religion in its present
phase? To that question various answers are being returned, and
indeed it may be said that on this point almost all the main
differences of Christians turn. The Church of Rome maintains in
essence the sacerdotal view of the later Old Testament times, though
in a spiritualised Christian shape, and to this the High Anglican
view is a more or less pronounced return. The Protestant Churches,
on the other hand, regard priests and sacrifices as anachronisms
since the death of Christ. In that, for the most part, they regard
the significance of sacrifice as being summed up and completed; and
the present dispensation is for them the realisation in embryo of
that which Old Testament saints looked forward to--a people of God,
every true member of which is both priest and prophet, _i.e._ has
free and unrestricted access to God, and is authorised and required
to speak in His name. The interest of Protestant Christians,
therefore, in priesthood and sacrifice in the Old Testament
sense, though very great and enduring, has no connection with the
continuation of sacrifice. They look upon the Old Testament ritual
as wholly obsolete now. It was simply a stage in the religious
development of the chosen people, and as such it has no claim to be
continued among Christians.
By a curious allegorical process, however, some devout Protestants
keep alive their interest in Old Testament ritual by finding in
it an elaborate symbolism covering the whole field of evangelical
theology. But this revivification of the old law is too arbitrary
and subjective, as well as too improbable, to have an abiding place
in Christianity. It is, moreover, useless for the guidance of life;
for all that is thus ingeniously put into the Levitical ordinances
is found more clearly and directly expressed elsewhere. The amount
of religious symbolism in the earlier stages of Israelite religion
is small, and very simple and direct. Even in the most elaborate
parts of the Levitical legislation, _e.g._ in the directions
regarding the Tabernacle, the purposely allegorical element is kept
within comparatively narrow limits; and we may boldly say that the
mind which delights in finding spiritual mysteries in every detail
of the sacrificial ritual is Rabbinical rather than Christian. On
the other hand we need not enter upon a discussion of the view held
by "Modern" or Broad Church theologians and by Unitarians, that
sacrifice was merely a heathen form taken over into Mosaism, that
it had no special significance there, and that the ideas connected
with it have absolutely no place in enlightened Christian theology.
The Christianity which attaches no sacrificial signification to the
death of Christ has, so far as I know, never shown itself to be a
type of religion able to create a future, and it is only with types
of Christianity that do and can live we have to do. Our question
here therefore is limited to this, Which of the two types of view,
the Roman Catholic or the Protestant, is truest to the Old Testament
teaching?
Externally, perhaps, the evidence seems to favour the Roman
Catholic position; for the prophets either directly say, or imply,
that sacrifice shall be restored with new purity and power in the
Messianic time. This is so patent a fact that it led Edward Irving
to say that it was the Old Testament economy that should abide,
and that of the New Testament which should pass away. But the
inner progress and development of Old Testament religion is quite
as decisively on the other side. As we have seen, Old Testament
piety had at the beginning almost no recognised expression save in
connection with sacrifice, and the Exile first trained the people
to faithfulness to God without it, sowing the seed of a religious
life largely separate from the sacrificial ritual. Then the
ordinance demanding sacrifice at one central altar, which, though
introduced by Deuteronomy, was made the exclusive law only by the
post-exilic community, furthered the growth of these germs, so that
they produced the synagogue system. This completed the severance
of the ordinary daily religion of the bulk of the people from
sacrificial ritual, so far as that was attained within the limits
of Judaism, and prepared the way for Pauline Christianity, in which
all allegiance to ritual Judaism is cast off. Now, as between the
external and internal evidence, there can be little doubt that the
latter has by far the greater weight, especially as the external
evidence can, perfectly well, be read in a different sense. The Old
Testament promises that sacrifice should be restored may be held
to have been fulfilled by the sacrificial death of Christ, which
completed and filled up all that had gone before. In that case the
evidence that sacrifice and ritual are now obsolete for Christians
is left standing alone, and the Protestant view is justified.
And the case for this view is strengthened immeasurably by observing
that the modern sacerdotalism has taken up as essential what was
the main vice of sacrificial worship in the old economy. That was,
as we have seen, the tendency to rest on the mere performance of
the external rite, without reference to the disposition of the
heart or even to conduct. Rivers of oil and hecatombs of victims
were thought sufficient to meet all possible demands on God's part,
and against this the polemic of the prophets is unceasing. Now in
almost all modern sacerdotalism the doctrine of the efficacy of
sacraments duly administered, apart from right dispositions in
either him who administers them or in him who receives them, has
been affirmed. It is not now, as it was in the "old time," an evil
tendency which had to be assiduously fought against, but which
could not be overcome. It is openly incorporated in the orthodox
teaching, and is distinctly provided for in the ideal of Christian
worship. That marks a considerable falling away from the prophetic
ideal: it can hardly be regarded as the appointed end of that great
religious movement which the prophets dominated and directed for so
long. The teaching of Deuteronomy certainly is, that wherever mere
external acts are supposed to have power to secure entrance into the
spiritual world of life and peace, there the character of God is
misconceived and religion degraded. What it demands is the inward
and spiritual allegiance of faithful men to God. What it depicts as
the essence of religious life is a set of the whole nature Godward,
as deep and irresistible as the set of the tides--
"Such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam."
Under no sacerdotal system can that view be unreservedly accepted,
and therein lies the condemnation of every such system. So far as it
is allowed to prevail, the force of the prophetic polemic has to be
ignored or evaded, and in greater or less degree the same spiritual
decay which the prophets mourned over in Israel must appear.
But it is not only where trust in the mere _opus operatum_ is
theoretically justified that it makes its baleful presence felt. It
may surreptitiously creep in where the door is theoretically shut
against it. The tendency is very deep-seated in human nature; and
many evangelical preachers, who repudiate all sacramentarianism, and
throw the full emphasis of Christian religious life upon grace and
faith, yet bring back again in subtler shape that very thing which
they have rejected. For example, instead of the reception of the
sacrament at the hands of ordained ministers, a man's acceptance
with God is sometimes made to depend upon a declaration of belief
that Christ has died for him, or that he has been redeemed and saved
by Christ. Wherever such statements are forced upon men, there is
a tendency to assume that a decisive step in the spiritual life is
taken by the mere utterance of them. The motives which actuate the
utterer are taken for granted; the existence of such a set of the
spiritual nature to God as Deuteronomy demands is supposed to be
proved by the mere spoken words; and men who cannot or will not say
such things glibly are unchurched without mercy. What is that but
the _opus operatum_ in its most offensive shape? But in whatever
shape it appears, the Deuteronomic demand for love to God, with the
heart and soul and strength, as essential to all true spiritual
service and sacrifice, condemns it. Love to God and men are the main
things in true religion. All else is subordinate and secondary.
Sacrifice and ritual without these are dead forms. That is the
Deuteronomic teaching, and by it, once for all, the true relation of
the cultus to the life is fixed.
Nevertheless the priestly and sacrificial system of the Old
Testament has even for Christians a present importance, for it is
an adumbration of that which was to be done in the death of Christ.
It has an unspeakable value, when rightly used, as an object-lesson
in the elements which are essential to a right approach to a Holy
God on the part of sinful men. Even in heathenism there were such
foreshadowings; and nothing is more fitted to exalt our views of the
Divine wisdom than to trace, as we can now do, the ways in which
man's seekings after God, even beyond the bounds of the chosen
people, took forms that were afterwards absorbed and justified in
the redeeming work of our Blessed Lord. For example, Professor
Robertson Smith says of certain ancient heathen piacular sacrifices,
"The dreadful sacrifice is performed, not with savage joy, but with
awful sorrow, and in the mystic sacrifices the deity himself suffers
with and for the sins of his people and lives again in their new
life." Now if we admit that he is not unduly importing into these
sacrifices ideas which are really foreign to them, surely awe is the
only adequate emotion wherewith a believer in Christ can meet such a
strange prophecy, in the lowest religion, of that which is deepest
in the highest.[74] The sacrificial system in general was founded,
in part at least, on belief in the possibility and desirability of
communion with God. In the sacrificial feasts this was supposed to
be attained, and the essential religious needs of mankind found
expression in much of the ritual. If the death of the god, and his
returning to life again in his people found a prominent place in
piacular sacrifices in various lands, that suggests that in some
dim way even heathen men had learned that sin cannot be removed and
forgiven without cost to God as well as to man, and that communion
in suffering as well as in joy is a necessary element of life with
God. The human heart, Divinely biassed, asserted itself in effort
after such association with Deity, and in the feeling that sin was
that element in life which it would make the highest demand upon the
Divine love to set effectively aside.
[74] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xxi., p. 138.
But if such preparation for the fulness of the time was going on in
heathenism, if the mind and heart of man, driven forward by Divinely
ordered experience and its own needs, could produce such forecasts
in the ritual of heathen religion, we surely must admit that the
religious ritual in Israel had an even more intimate connection with
that which was to come. For we claim that in guiding the destinies
of Israel God was, in an exceptional manner, revealing Himself,
that among them He established the true religion, unfolded it in
their history, and prepared as nowhere else for the advent of Him
who should make real and objective the union of God and man. Here
consequently, if anywhere, we should expect to find the permanent
factors in religion recognised even in the forms of worship, and
the less permanent allowed to fall away. We should also expect the
ritual of the cultus to grow in depth of meaning with time, and that
it would more and more recognise the moral and spiritual elements
in life. Finally, we should expect that it would be the parent of
conceptions rising above and beyond itself, and more fully consonant
with the revelation given by Christ than anything in heathenism.
Now all these expectations would seem to have been fulfilled; and
it is reasonable to assume that those sacrificial ideas which
corresponded to the deepened consciousness of sin, and synchronised
apparently with the decay of Israel's political independence, are
rightly applied to the elucidation of the meaning of Christ's death.
Of course mistakes may be and have been made in the application of
this principle; the most common being that of forcing every detail
of the imperfect and temporary provision into the interpretation of
the perfect and eternal. Sometimes, too, the significance of the
life and coming of Christ are obscured by a too exclusive attention
to His sacrificial death. But the principle in itself must be sound,
if Christianity is in any sense to be regarded as the completion
and full development of the Old Testament religion. Besides the
immediate significance of sacrifice which the worshippers perceived
and by which they were edified, there was another significance
which belonged to it as a step in the long progress which had been
marked out for this people in the Divine purpose. Regarded from that
standpoint, the sacrifices, and the ritual connected with them, had
a meaning for the future also, were in fact typical of the final
sacrifice which would need to be offered only once for all. How
much of this was understood by the men of ancient Israel we have no
means of knowing. Some, doubtless, had a faint perception of it; but
at its clearest it was probably more a dissatisfaction with what
they had, leading them to look for some better sacrifice, than any
more definite understanding. But what they only dimly guessed was,
as we can now see, the inner meaning of all; and it is perfectly
legitimate to use both the provisional and the perfected revelations
to explain each other. On these grounds the New Testament freely
makes use of the ancient ritual to bring out the full significance
of the sacrifice of Christ.
No doubt a different view has to be reckoned with. Many say that
the whole of this typical reference is a begging of the question.
In the infancy of mankind sacrifice was a natural way of expressing
adoration and of seeking the favour of the gods. In the heathen
world it reached its highest manifestation in those piacular
sacrifices of which Robertson Smith speaks, but which nevertheless
were merely an outgrowth of Totemism. In Israel sacrifice was taken
up by the religion of Yahweh and embodied in it. The spiritual
forces which were at work in that nation used it as a means whereby
to express themselves; and when Christ came to complete the
revelation, His purely ethical and spiritual work was unavoidably
expressed in sacrificial terms. But that is no guarantee that
the essential thing in the work of Christ was sacrifice. On the
contrary, the sacrificial language used about it is of no real
importance. It is simply the natural and unavoidable form of
expression, in that place and at that time, for any spiritual
deliverance. In short, had there been really nothing sacrificial in
the death of Christ, the religious meaning and significance of it
would have been expressed in sacrificial language, for no other was
available. Consequently the presence of such language in the New
Testament does not prove that the sacrificial meaning belongs to
its main and permanent significance. The sacrificial idea, on this
view of things, belongs, both in Israel and in heathenism, to the
elements which Christianity superseded and did away with; and it is
consequently an anachronism to bring it in to explain and elucidate
anything done or taught under this new dispensation.
But such a view is singularly narrow, and unjust to the past. It
surely is more honouring to both God and man to suppose that the
capital religious ideas of the race, those ideas which have been
everywhere present and have been seen to deepen and refine with
every advance man has made, have permanent value. Moreover, on any
view, it is probable that in them the essential religious needs of
human nature have found expression. If so, we should expect that
they would in the end be met, and that the perfect religion, when it
did come, would not ignore but satisfy the demand which the nature
of man and the providence of God had originated and combined to
strengthen. Further, it is the very essence of the Scriptural view
of Christ that He perfected and carried to their highest power all
the essential features in the religious constitution of Israel. He
_was_ indeed the true Israel, and all Israel's tasks fell to Him.
As Prophet, Priest, and Messianic King alike, He excelled all His
predecessors, who were what they were only because they had, in
their degree, done part of the work which He was to come to finish.
Apart from the religion of the Old Testament, therefore, Christ
is unintelligible, and that, in turn, without Him, has neither a
progress nor a goal. Belief in a Divine direction of the world
would in itself be sufficient to forbid the separation of one from
the other. If so, it will follow that the sacrificial idea is
essential to the interpretation of our Lord's work. That idea grew
in complexity with the growth of the higher religion. It was at
its deepest when religious thought and feeling had done its most
perfect work; and on every principle of evolution we should expect
that, instead of disappearing at the next stage, it would, though
transformed, be more influential than ever. It is so if Christ's
death is regarded from the point of view of sacrifice; whereas,
if that is laid aside like a worn-out garment, it can never have
been anything anywhere but an excrescence and a superstition. That
has not been so; the essential ideas connected with sacrifice, and
forgiveness by means of it, were lessons Divinely taught in the
childhood of the world, to prepare men to understand the Divinest
mystery of history when it should be manifested to the world.