The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures
A Series of Sermons
- First published
- 1854
- Length
- 94,000 words, about 7 hours' reading
Preached at Lincoln’s Inn in the spring of 1854, these sermons follow the idea of sacrifice through the Scriptures: from the offerings of Cain and Abel, Noah and Abraham, through the Passover, the Levitical law and David, to “the Lamb before the foundation of the world,” and on to the sacrifice of Christ as redemption, propitiation, peace-offering and victory.
The book appeared in the months after Maurice’s dismissal from King’s College, and is dedicated, in a long letter, to the members of the Young Men’s Christian Association, before whom his Theological Essays had been publicly attacked the previous winter.
Contents
The one-line summaries are guides drafted with the help of AI, not Maurice’s words.
- Dedicatory Letter
Maurice rebuts Dr. Candlish’s charge that his teaching secretly agrees with the Unitarians, tracing his real debts to Irving, Erskine, and the Quakers, and grounding the book in the doctrine of sacrifice.
- Contents
- Sermon I. The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel
Cain and Abel’s sacrifices differ not because God arbitrarily favours one gift over another, but because trust marks Abel’s offering and self-will marks Cain’s.
- Sermon II. Noah’s Sacrifice
Noah’s altar and burnt offering, and God’s sweet-smelling pleasure in it, show that sacrifice springs from trust in a righteous, life-giving God rather than fear or bargaining, though its perfect fulfilment still lies ahead.
- Sermon III. The Sacrifice of Abraham
When God asks Abraham to offer Isaac, the true sacrifice demanded is Abraham’s own will, already surrendered before the ram appears in the thicket.
- Sermon IV. Sacrifice of the Passover
The Passover and the dedication of the firstborn declare Israel a redeemed and consecrated nation, so that every person and people, then and now, must choose to whom they are devoted.
- Sermon V. The Legal Sacrifices
The Levitical sacrifices, offered voluntarily yet fixed by God’s own law at one tabernacle, teach that atonement is God’s gift to a repentant will, not a bargain struck through a priest’s private lore.
- Sermon VI. David’s Sacrifice
David’s broken and contrite heart proves a more complete sacrifice than a flawless animal, since in it he surrenders himself to God, and shows why Israel’s true King must be a man of sorrows.
- Sermon VII. The Lamb Before the Foundation of the World
Peter’s Lamb foreknown before the world’s foundation reveals sacrifice as the eternal, filial harmony of Father and Son, not a plan improvised, as Milton pictures it, only after Adam’s fall.
- Sermon VIII. Christ’s Sacrifice a Redemption
Sacrifice belongs to God’s own nature, not merely to human sin, so Christ’s redemption buys men out of real bondage to inherited falsehood and idolatry, rather than paying off an angry God.
- Sermon IX. Christ’s Sacrifice a Deliverance from the Curse of the Law
Christ became a curse to redeem us from the law’s curse, not by absorbing the Father’s wrath, but by freeing the sin-bound conscience the law could only condemn, never save.
- Sermon X. The Sacrifice of Christ a Propitiation
Propitiation is not a means of making God favourable but God’s own declaration, in Christ’s blood, that he has already made peace and continually meets his people at the mercy-seat.
- Sermon XI. The Sacrifice of Christ the Purification of the Conscience
Where the blood of calves and goats under the old covenant could only purify the flesh, Christ’s willing self-offering as the true High Priest cleanses the conscience itself, once for all.
- Sermon XII. Christ Made Sin for Us
Paul’s stark phrase that Christ was made sin should not be softened to a mere sin-offering, for it describes his sinless, entire sympathy with sinners so that we might become God’s righteousness.
- Sermon XIII. Christ’s Sacrifice the Peace-Offering for Mankind
Christ’s cross is the peace-offering that breaks down the wall between Jew and Gentile, reconciling both to God and to one another and opening access to the Father through one Spirit.
- Sermon XIV. Christ’s Sacrifice a Power to Form Us After his Likeness
The mind of Christ, who emptied himself, took a servant’s form, and obeyed unto death on the cross, is the very pattern God calls believers to share and by which he was exalted.
- Sermon XV. Christ’s Death a Victory Over the Devil
The devil is the Accuser whose slanders use fear of death to enslave the conscience, but Christ’s own death, freely embraced in love, breaks that power and proves death no longer separates us from God.
- Sermon XVI. Christ the Advocate
Christ the Advocate does not plead with a reluctant Father to forgive but reveals, as the Father’s faithful witness, a love that was always there and needs no persuading.
- Sermon XVII. Christ the High-Priest
A true high priest must share the infirmity of those for whom he offers sacrifice, and Christ, learning obedience through his own anguish and suffering, becomes both perfect priest and sacrifice at once.
- Sermon XVIII. The Adoration of the Lamb
Every real chain of sin has been broken by Christ’s blood for every person, so that all who believe are made kings and priests to God, not merely excused from punishment.
- Sermon XIX. The Word of God Conquering by Sacrifice
The rider on the white horse, faithful and true and clothed in his own blood, wages a righteous war against selfishness in every heart, proving sacrifice the true law of the universe.
- Note
Maurice acknowledges a debt to Archdeacon Hare’s sermon on sacrifice for some ethical passages, and welcomes the independent agreement of Mr. Thompson’s Bampton Lectures on the same subject.
About this digital edition
How the text was made, and the printer's errors corrected
The original book
The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from Scriptures: A Series of Sermons by Frederick Denison Maurice.
This edition
Produced 2026-11-01 from a page scan of the printed book, as part of a project to make F. D. Maurice’s works freely available in every useful digital form. The guiding principle throughout was fidelity to the printed text: Maurice’s own spelling, capitalization, punctuation, ligatures, and typography rule, except where a printing error was identified and deliberately emended (each such change is listed below).
How this text was made
The transcription pipeline combines automated tools, AI models, and page-by-page human review:
- OCR and conversion. The scan was OCRed (ocrmypdf/Tesseract) and converted to structured text (marker), then cleaned by a language model working chunk by chunk.
- The cleanup model’s changes were not reviewed against the print in this edition. Footnotes were neither verified against the printed page nor renumbered in this edition.
- Quotation marks were not normalized to the printer’s own conventions in this edition.
- Italics were not restored in this edition. The OCR text layer records none, so the 1 italic span this edition carries were not checked against the print.
- Small capitals and ligatures (æ, œ) were not checked against the print in this edition, and the OCR drops many ligatures.
- Greek was not checked word by word against the print in this edition, and the OCR reads Greek type poorly.
- A whole-book audit by a language model checked structure, headings, footnotes, and Greek; its findings were reviewed by a human editor against the print before any were applied.
The text contains 0 footnotes and 38 small-caps renderings of the print.
Emendations
Places where this edition deliberately differs from the printed book, each a correction of an apparent printing error, verified against the page image:
- p. 93: ‘Egypt.’ Exodus xiii. 14-17.’ → ‘Egypt.’—Exodus xiii. 14-17.’
- p. 129: ‘despise.’ Psalm li. 16, 17.’ → ‘despise.’—Psalm li. 16, 17.’
- p. 158: ‘spot.’ 1 St. Peter i. 18, 19.’ → ‘spot.’— 1 St. Peter i. 18, 19.’
- p. 286: ‘world.’ 1 John ii. 1, 2.’ → ‘world.’—1 John ii. 1, 2.’
- p. 320: ‘Amen.’ Revelation i. 5, 6.’ → ‘Amen.’—Revelation i. 5, 6.’
Printer’s oddities that are not errors were left exactly as printed (including inconsistent proper-name spellings and the original’s own numbering gaps).