The Pulpit Commentary (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Pulpit Commentary

What is the origin, true character, and proper place of sacrifice as a part of religion Half a century ago, when many of us were schoolboys, there was certain definite teaching on this subject. Probably nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand educated Englishmen, who had seriously turned their thoughts to the matter, were per fectly satisfied with the view, and regarded it as almost axiomatic, that sacrifice was a divinely appointed religious rite, intended to typify and educate the world for one Great Sacrifice, which Great Sacrifice having been accomplished, there was no need for, or even place for, any future sacrifice, truly so called, in the Christian Church. I do not put the matter thus under the idea that the consensus of antiquity is necessarily any warrant for the truth of a doctrine, but only because the view of sacrifice that I have alluded to has seemed to multitudes so scriptural, so simple, so fully to account for the peculiarities and mysteries of the subject, that in reconsidering it we should be led to use the utmost diligence in finally satisfying our minds as to its true place and character.

For we must reconsider it, if not for our own satisfaction, at least for the satisfaction of those we may have to teach. This duty is forced upon us by the fact that the waves of modern opinion have rudely shaken our ancient, and what perhaps we considered our orthodox, notions about sacrifices; and, indeed, it has been not merely a shaking, but a complex shaking - one wave rolling the notion in one direction and another in an opposite one, so that we feel that we must first secure the notion before we can assign it its true place in history and in reference to the Christian religion.

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