The Christian System - Chapter 11

THE ATTRIBUTES OF A REAL SIN-OFFERING.

I. A single action or event often involves, in weal or woe, a family, a nation, an empire. Who can count the effects or bearings of the elevation or fall of a Cesar, a Hannibal, a Napoleon? A single victory, like that of Zama, or of Waterloo; a single revolution, like that of England, or America, sometimes involves the fortunes of a world. Neither actions nor events can be appreciated but through their bearings and tendencies upon every person and thing with [46] which they come in contact. The relations, connexions, and critical dependencies in which persons and actions stand are often so numerous and so various, that it is seldom, or perhaps, at all, in the power of man to calculate the consequences, or the value of one of a thousand of the more prominent actions of his life.

II. Who could have estimated, or who can estimate, the moral or the political bearings of the sale of Joseph to a band of Ishmaelites--of the exposure of Moses in a cradle of rushes on the Nile--of the anointing of David king of Israel--of the schism of the twelve tribes under Rehoboam--of the treachery of Judas, the martyrdom of Stephen, the conversion of Paul, the accession of Constantine the Great, the apostacy of Julian, the crusades against the Turks, the reformation of Luther, the revival of letters, or any of the great movements of the present day? How difficult, then, is it to estimate the rebellion of Satan, the fall of Adam, the death of Christ, in all their bearings upon the destinies of the universe!

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The Christian System - Chapter 10

SACRIFICE FOR SIN.

I. The history of sacrifice is the history of atonement, reconciliation, redemption, and remission of sins. These are not, at least in the Jewish and Christian style, exactly synonymous terms. Sacrifice atones and reconciles. It propitiates God, and reconciles man. It is the cause, and these are its effects on heaven and earth, on God and man.

II. For form's sake, and perhaps, for the sake of perspicuity, four questions ought here to be propounded and resolved, at the very threshold of our inquiries. 1. What is sacrifice? 2. To whom is it to be offered? 3. For whom is it to be offered? 4. By whom is it to be offered? The answers are as prompt and as brief as the interrogations. 1. In its literal primary acceptance, it is "the solemn and religious infliction of death upon an innocent and unoffending victim, usually by shedding its blood." Figuratively, it means the offering of any thing, living or dead, person or animal, or property, to God. 2. Religious sacrifice is to be [36] offered to God alone. 3. It is to be offered for man. 4. It is to be offered by a priest.

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The Christian System - Chapter 9

RELIGION FOR MAN, AND NOT MAN FOR RELIGION.

I. Religion, as the term imports, began after the Fall; for it indicates a previous apostacy. A remedial system is for a diseased subject. The primitive man could love, wonder, and adore as angels now do, without religion; but man, fallen and apostate, needs religion in order to his restoration to the love, and worship, and enjoyment of God. Religion, then, is a system of means of reconciliation--an institution for bringing man back to God--something to bind man anew to love and delight in God.1

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