they sprinkled the blood upon the altar, and where, in the smaller victims, the animal was slain. This typified our blessed Lord's standing on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, and there pleading the merits of his passion.-They ate of certain sacrifices on which the sin of the offerer was laid, to denote that they took such sin, as mediators, upon themselves, and "bare the iniquity of it" "to make atonement for it" before the Lord. This was a complete figure of Jesus who was a sinoffering for us, "that he might bring us to God;" "who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree," and thus suffered the punishment of them, and was, at once, the victim of propitiation and the organ of intercession.

II. But in the Second place, the Levitical worship foreshows in all its most essential particulars, the end to be accomplished by the Christian. That worship consisted of three parts, confession, sacrifice, and mediation.

Confession of sins implied sorrow, repentance, and amendment, and was a direct acknowledgment to God, that the person who made it had incurred his displeasure. He came to the priest to unburden his mind, and the very act of his doing so, was a tacit declaration that he was not meet of himself to communicate with God. Not only did the Law itself forbid a direct intercourse of the offender with God, but his own conscience suggested to him that he was not worthy to approach the Father of Spirits.

His first step, therefore, was to acknowledge his transgression, and this to the person who was lawfully authorised to receive it. In all cases whatever confession preceded any expectation of mercy, and was the indispensable qualification for becoming meet to partake of it. When, therefore, the penitent offender had opened his heart to the appointed minister of God's word, and signified not only his regret for what was past, but his desire and determination to do better for the future, he stood in a new and acceptable condition before God, and had the hope of forgiveness benignantly extended to him. This was conveyed in the form of a benediction by the priest, and was equivalent to an absolution.

Now, if we look at the counterpart of this scheme of religion, we see how exactly they agree together. The substance of our Lord's teaching, the very end of the Christian dispensation, was repentance and amendment of life. The Baptist began his ministry with it; our blessed Lord reiterated and confirmed it; and his apostles and teachers in all ages have insisted upon it. Without repentance towards God, there can be no hope of forgiveness; and without amendment of life, there can be no sincerity of confession. It is, perhaps, in this, more than in any other part of divine worship, that the spirit of true piety consists. It shows, not only the conviction of sin reigning in the breast, but an acute sense and detestation of it; and it places the penitent offender in a light most agreeable to the goodness of God, who is "not willing that any should perish,

but that all should come to repentance." If under the old law confession was made to the priest, under the new it is made to Him who is head over all things to the Church. If in the former dispensation pardon came by the minister of God; in the latter it comes by the Son of God, who hath power of himself to forgive all sin.

Sacrifice, in the Jewish economy, followed the public confession of sins. The offender brought a victim to the altar to make an atonement, and there laying his hand upon its head, to show his property in it, and to put his offences upon it, he confessed them over it, and then slew it, to signify that he deserved to die himself, but that he transferred the animal, now bearing his iniquities, to God, in whom the right to his own life was vested, and thus escaped by the substitution of another. Then the priest took the blood, in which the life of the animal subsists, and presented it to God, to denote that the life and the sin of the offender were tendered together, and that forgiveness and renewal of favour, were a regrant of existence on the terms of the original Covenant.

Now, all this shadows out the high sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, and lets us into the meaning of those expressions, in which he is described as making his life an offering for sin, dying the just for the unjust, giving himself for us, with many others. He is called the Lamb without spot, in allusion to the morning and evening sacrifice; our Passover, who was sacrificed for us; our Peace and Propitiation;

and his blood is said to cleanse us from all sin, to wash us, to redeem us, to sanctify us, and to bring us nigh to God. He is styled our Life and the Life of the world, as having triumphed over death and the grave, and purchased for us an eternal inheritance in heaven. And the whole tenour of Christianity, the whole order of its doctrines, and worship, and service, runs upon the efficacy of his atonement, the completeness of his ministry, the utter overthrow and annihilation of sin as a conqueror. His redemption is not only much more efficacious than the redemption by the blood of animals, whose lives bought back the life of the offerer, but it is infinitely more extensive. The sacrifices of old were limited to the party who offered them, an individual or a nation. Christ died for the sins of the whole world, -those who lived before his advent, as well as those who have been born since that occurrence. legal sacrifices extended to legal trespasses only, and consequently "could not make the comers thereunto perfect." But the Christian sacrifice embraces all offences positive as well as ritual, and places the penitent in the same circumstances with respect to God, as if he had never transgressed. They, through the imperfection of their nature, required to be continually renewed; but this, by one offering, perfects for ever them that are sanctified by it.

The

Mediation was another part of the Levitical worship. The priest was appointed to intercede with God for the penitent, and consequently, after confession of sins and the death of the animal, he took

upon him the office of a mediator, and his presentation of the blood, was not only a literal fulfilment of the office, but an indirect assurance of the pardon of the offence.

Now, there is no part of Christ's holy office which is more particularly shadowed out by the Jewish religion than this. The end of his coming into the world was to make reconciliation, and this was effected by his own death and intercession. "Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." He is exhibited in all the particulars of his administration as having this end in view, and his death, as a victim of propitiation, stands unaccounted for in any other light. As man had forfeited his original title to his Maker's love, he wanted some other means than those of repentance and contrition, to restore him again to favour. The inadequacy of repentance without atonement is perfectly obvious to every one who considers, that repentance cannot make satisfaction to justice for transgression, but is only a means of expressing better conduct for the time to come. An atonement implies some kind of sacrifice equivalent, in the acceptor's mind, to the guilt of the offence. It is in the nature of a penalty paid by the delinquent, and it must bear some proportion to the extent of the transgression. Now, a Now, a penalty paid to God by one of his degenerate creatures, must evidently want this proportion, because what can he give, but his life, that is at all adequate to his guilt? Repentance, how deep, how severe soever,