(Lincoln’s Inn, 5th Sunday in Lent, April 2, 1854.)
And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt-sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord: and the priests, Aaron’s sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation….. And the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt-sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.’–LEVITICUS i. 1-6, and part of 9th verse.
You must now consider the Israelites as an organised nation. They have the Passover, which is to remind them from generation to generation that they are one people, one with their forefathers, one with their descendants, one because the Lord has redeemed them out of the house of bondage, one because He is their King for ever and ever. They have commandments, which tell them that they are not the subjects of a capricious despot, but of a righteous Ruler, who would have them know the laws by which they are governed. They have an interpreter of these laws, and a set of elders or heads of tribes who work with him in deciding the causes which arise between man and man. They have statutes, applicable to particular cases,—punishments, awarded to specific crimes. They have, lastly, a tabernacle, which goes with the people where they go,—which announces to them the presence of God with them,—which testifies that He is guiding them, which is said to be a meeting place between them and Him,—in which a whole tribe is set apart to minister, in which a family of that tribe is consecrated to offer sacrifices. What I am to speak of, to-day, is the relation between these sacrifices and the rest of the polity as I have described it,—the relation between them and the distinct Israelites who formed the congregation. I have taken the first verses of the book of Leviticus as my guide in this inquiry. As far as the principle of the national sacrifices is concerned, they are, it seems to me, all that we want. But they are the introduction to a book, to other parts of which I may have occasion to refer for the illustration of their meaning, and for the purpose of showing how the sacrifices for the nation as a body were connected with the sacrifices for its individual members.
The first words of the passage show us how needful it is that we should understand the principle of the Jewish commonwealth before we examine this institution of it. According to the heathen notion of sacrifice, as we considered it last Sunday, the offerings must be always experiments to obtain some benefit, which the power to whom they are presented can bestow, or to remove some evil which it is likely to inflict. The rules respecting them may have been devised by those whom the people held in most reverence for their wisdom or their sanctity. They may acquire fresh authority from long transmission and observance. But they are always liable to change. New and more extraordinary occasions may demand higher gifts, more august propitiations. Traditions may become more complicated each new stage, almost each new year. The child has experiences unknown to the father. Influences of the heavens upon the earth are detected which had not been before observed. Crimes multiply, and fears multiply with them. Who can tell that the sacrifice, which was available to remove the punishments which threatened one generation, or one man, may not utterly fail for another?
(1.) But here the very same voice which proclaimed from the Commandments on Sinai is said to announce the nature of the sacrifices, and how, and when, and by whom they are to be presented. The unseen King and Lawgiver is here, as everywhere, making known His Will. Those sacrifices, which it was supposed were to bend and determine His Will, themselves proceed from it. To vary them at the suggestion of any priest, or council of priests, under any impulse or inspiration of devotion, or gratitude, or fear, or sense of evil, is to depart from His decrees, to commit one of those transgressions which the sacrifices themselves are provided to meet.
Consider how immense this difference is; how the doctrine of Moses reverses all those conceptions, and subverts all those motives, which are supposed by many to be at the basis of sacrifices, which have actually been at work in a vast majority of those who have brought them and enjoined them. But consider how exactly this doctrine accords with that which we found to be involved in the patriarchal sacrifices, when there was no precept enjoining them; how the security of fixed law carries out and expounds the principle to which we found men doing homage when there was no law. The difference between Abel’s offering and Cain’s, between Noah’s and the offerings of the corrupt and violent men against whom he denounced judgments, between Abraham’s and those of the cities of the plain,—is precisely that which is maintained in this more advanced stage of society, by the words which were spoken to the children of Israel out of the tabernacle of the congregation.
(2.) That they are said to be spoken there, is the next point to which I would draw your attention. The tabernacle, as I have just said, was the witness of God’s abiding presence with the people, the pledge that they were to trust Him, and that He sought intercourse with them. From thence proceeded those precepts which have reference to trespasses, transgressions, sins; and to the methods which an Israelite, feeling that he had trespassed, transgressed, sinned, was to take for obtaining peace and reconciliation. A whole scheme of services, ordinances, institutes, is arranged and appointed under the most awful sanctions, by the Divine King— ’ for what end? That He may re-establish an intercourse between Him and His subjects which has been interrupted; that He may bring back those whose hearts tell them they have wandered.
(3.) Again, it is not an insignificant point that the tabernacle is represented as the tabernacle of the congregation. There, where God dwells, is the proper home of the whole people; there they may feel that they are a whole people; there they may know that they are one, because He who has called them into covenant with Him is One. The more the sense of this unity was realised, the more easy and intelligible would be the words which follow.
(4.) ‘Say to the children of Israel, If any of you bring ’an offering unto the Lord.’ It is not said, ’ You shall ‘bring this offering;’ it is said, ’ If you do, then so and ‘so it must be brought.’ The desire for such sacrifice is presumed. Might it not safely be presumed? Did not the condition and history of every people show that it existed; that it could only be stifled when the strongest and deepest convictions of humanity were stifled? Wherever there was in men no sense of thankfulness, of obligation, of dependence,—wherever men were entirely wrapped up in themselves, satisfied with themselves,—wherever they had no sense of the past being connected with the present, and the future with both,—there was no movement towards sacrifice, no effort to make sacrifice. Whoever cherished these feelings amidst the strangest perversions and contradictions, felt sacrifice to be a necessary and cardinal condition of their lives, though it might be turned to the destruction of the impulses which had prompted it. Everything in the position of the Jew was awakening in him the sense of gratitude, of obligation, of dependence. He had been redeemed; he was bound to the righteous Lord who had set him free; he had no hope of life and freedom but from Him. Moreover, he was one of the children of Israel; he had obligations to his fathers, to his children; he could not separate himself from his country. He was apprised of relationships which he could not shake off; of laws which must execute themselves whether he obeyed them or not—which he was created to obey. In such a man the sense of transgression, of disobedience, is awakened more than in anyone else. His whole education serves to bring it forth in him. Everything tells him what has been done for him, what goodness and mercy are compassing him round; everything witnesses to him that there is a want of sympathy with them in him: everything tells him of an order that is fixed and that is blessed, and that there has been disorder in him. How certain was it that he would seek for some way of ridding himself of his burden, and that he would be ready to ask every person and thing to tell him what that way was. All the nations around would be saying to him, ‘Our way of shaking off these troublesome thoughts and recollections, is to offer sacrifice. We go to the priest or wise man; he tells us what God we have grieved, how we are to make amends to him. We do what he bids us; we take it for granted that he has told us the right thing; we can then go comfortably to our business or our pleasure, and hope that all is right or will be right in due time. Of course there are some offences which require a greater compensation than others. Rich men are better off than the poor: when they have committed any huge crime, they can slaughter a whole herd by way of satisfaction, or bring some still more precious gift. We must do as well as we can. One animal will perhaps be reckoned enough in our case, both because more are not to be had, and because poverty may have had some share in making us go wrong.’
(5.) In many countries this would be the popular language. It would not be exactly so in Egypt; there the animal worship would in some degree interfere with the animal sacrifice. The ox might rather receive the offering, than be made the victim. The command to the Jew is not that he should offer any peculiar novel sacrifice. He is to take of the herd and the flock, the same kind of offering which Noah or Abraham would have presented; he is not to fear to take it, lest he should be extinguishing any divine life. The lesson is a double one. The common things, the most ordinary part of his possessions, are those which he is to bring; that is one part of his teaching: the animals are subjects of man; he is to rule them and make use of them for his own higher objects; that is another.
(6.) He, however, is to understand that the service he is engaged in, is a serious one. He may easily be tempted to regard it as a formality which he is to go through; but which is to be despatched with as little cost to himself, either of outward goods or of thought, as he can spend upon it. He must be reminded that sacrifice upon these terms is a lie. The demand that the victim from the herd shall be a male without blemish is a silent admonition to him of this truth if it leads him to reflect and question himself why such a rule should be laid down for him, one part of the object is accomplished; the ceremony is no longer a mere ceremony; the spirit of a man is occupied with it; the offering of the animal, he begins to perceive, is not the chief part of the sacrifice.
(7.) And to assist this conviction there comes in, the clause which sounds so strange in an accurate and formal edict, that he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord. ‘After all, then, it is matter of choice whether he will perform or neglect this service?’
Certainly: if there is no sense in him of evil done, or evil to be removed; if he has committed no trespass; if he has incurred no defilement; if he has no need of reconciliation;—he is not under any compulsion to approach the tabernacle. If he is a true Israelite,—if he has taken any measure of that which is implied in this name,—if he knows what it is to be a devoted, dedicated being to God, what it is to be one of a congregation, he is certain to feel that he has departed again and again from his right condition. But, as it is needful to assert that all sacrifice proceeds from the will of God, it is equally needful to affirm that the sacrifice is accomplished only by the consent of the will of man; that without that consent it is absolutely without meaning.
(8.) Although, however, there is this vindication of choice in the act of bringing the gift, there is no choice whatever as to the place at which it is to be presented. The words are strict and imperative: ‘He shall offer it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.’ ‘It is a private calamity he wishes to avert; why not offer private sacrifice? It is a sin of his own he wishes to be free from; why come forth to make this public acknowledgment of it?’ Such questions, according to the heathen views of sacrifice, were unanswerable; the whole faith of the Jew perished if he listened to them. Out of those notions of private sacrifice, grew everything which was superstitious, idolatrous, destructive of a commonwealth. It was not the bond to a common Lord that had been broken; it was an offence that had been committed against some special power,—some avenging deity, of earth or air. It was not the bond to the fellow-citizen that had been broken; the individual could set himself right, without any reference to father, wife, children, neighbours. An altogether confused notion of the nature of evil, a disbelief in the privileges which belonged to the Israelites as a body, a denial that they were a people called and redeemed by the one living God, a growing doubt, therefore, whether there was such a Being, these were the consequences of taking the ox or the sheep to some other place than that in which the Lord God had put His Name.
(9.) The victim was taken to the door of the place, at which all Israelites had an equal right to appear; but the man who brought it laid his own hand upon the head of it. He signified that the act was his; that it expressed thoughts in his mind which no one else could know of. The crime he had done, or the disease that was preying upon him, or the bitterness of spirit which he could not tell to another, might all be declared to the searcher of hearts: if he could not utter them the act uttered them. He comes in his ignorance, believing there is One who knows him, and has bidden him come. That which is passing in him cannot be weighed or measured. He cannot reduce it under the head of bodily grief, or mental grief, or stings of conscience; he cannot say how much of pleasure and Joy are mixed with the suffering, or whether it is good or bad, animal or spiritual. What did he understand of these refinements? What could they have profited him if he had understood them? He sought to have that explained to him which was utterly confused; to have himself set right. There was war in him; he needed peace. Someone was displeased with him; he desired to be reconciled.
(10.) And the words are as precise and strong as can be. ‘It shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.’ The reconciliation which he seeks he shall find. God will meet him there. God, who knows what he is,—what he is suffering,—what he has done,—who has appointed the conditions of his existence, who sees exactly how he has used them or abused them,—to whom the past and present of his life are both open—who has been making him aware of that in which he has been wrong,—of that in which he is weak and is likely to be wrong,—the God from whom he is conscious of estrangement, with whom he is sure that he ought to be at one,—He takes away that which separates them. He accepts this sign of his submission, He restores him to his rights in the divine society.
(11.) And now first it is that we hear of the priests, Aaron’s sons. They have not suggested what the offering shall be, or what is likely to be the best way of making it acceptable. All this is taken out of their hands; they are not even the persons through whom the communication of the divine will is made to the Israelites; they are the servants of a law, as much as the meanest of the people,—a law which they are to execute, which they must not, at their peril, depart from, to carry out any sublime notions of theirs, to meet any notions which may arise in the mind of any offender. The gift, the place, the atonement, are all spoken of before there is any allusion to them. But when they are introduced, we perceive at once that their office is a most important one; that the idea of the commonwealth and of the sacrifice would be imperfect, nay, self-contradictory, without them. If there was a congregation—if the individual Israelites were not to have their separate sacrifices and their separate gods—then there must be a representative of this unity; there must be one who acted as if they were a body. If the congregation derived its unity from its relation to the invisible Lord who had called out the family and the nation to be His witnesses to the world, then the man who expressed its unity must express its relation to this Lord. There could not be a fear of his ever glorifying himself on either of these positions, while he remembered the other, and while he remembered that they were inseparable. The abstracted Brahmin, standing aloof from the people, may believe that he is absorbed into his God—that he becomes identical with him. The minister of the congregation, the priest who was bound by his calling to feel himself one with them in all their sins and infirmities, had a perpetual witness in himself that he was no God, and that he could not approach to God whilst he supposed himself in any degree divided from God’s people. On the other hand, the priest may sink into one of the congregation, using any higher lore he has received only to gratify their tastes and fancies, or to gratify his own avarice and ambition at their expense; the vilest pander to all their most violent passions; interested in keeping them base and ignorant, lest they should see into his hypocrisy and loathe him as he deserves to be loathed. But so long as he remembers that ‘holiness to the Lord’ is inscribed on his forehead—that he is consecrated as a witness to the people of the actual relation which exists between them and the God of truth and righteousness—and of his will to put away their falsehood and evil, that they may be like Him—this horrible fall becomes as impossible as the other. So that, while the history tells us in plain terms that the Jewish priests were often not better than heathen priests, and when not better were very much worse, it testifies as clearly that their arrogance, and craft, and sottishness came from a disbelief and forgetfulness of their divine and human calling,—not from exaggerating its worth and sacredness.
(12.) And I believe there were lessons taught the priests in this very passage, as well as in other passages of this book, which would recur to them again and again, and smite their consciences, while they went on in an evil course, till their consciences became actually seared, and they and the nation they represented fell together. One of these lessons lay in their hereditary succession. The limitation of this office to a family signified that the priests were not chosen for their individual gifts or virtues, though these would be bestowed upon them freely if they remembered their calling. They took nothing by mere descent from their ancestors; they declared to each new age that the same God who had spoken to their fathers and ruled them, and held intercourse with them, and blotted out their sins, was speaking to them, ruling them, holding intercourse with them, blotting out their sins. And lest any family conceit should spring up, as of course it would, out of a vocation which, rightly apprehended, was so subversive of it, they were reminded continually by interruptions in the succession, by the atrocities of priests and the tremendous judgments which followed, how the instrument might be dashed in pieces, that the truth for which he existed to testify might be established.
(13.) The special office of the priest, as it is set forth in this passage, was also, I think, very significant to him of the end for which he was appointed. He was to bring the blood, and to sprinkle the blood round about the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. The blood, the Israelites had been told already, was the life, which they were not to eat, but to pour out like water. It had been said that whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, because in the image of God was man made, and because of every man’s brother would he require the life of man. This blood, this life, was evidently the most sacred part of the service; it is referred to in every part of the institution of sacrifice; it is connected with purification. Yet it was not mixed with the rest of the offering; it was poured out about the altar, while the mere animal, the dead thing, was offered as a whole burnt sacrifice. I apprehend that there were lessons here never to be forgotten, concerning death and life; concerning the preciousness and dignity of life; concerning the dedication of that to God; concerning the special duty of the priest to be a witness that the living sacrifice is that which God seeks for, that it is this which interprets the mystery of death, that it is this which purifies, that it is this which unites. The hint was given; the priest was to think over it, to dwell upon it, to consider what principles, yet to be brought out and realised, were latent in it. When he tried to do the work which was given him to do—when he entered with most simplicity into all that was weakest, and all that was saddest in those for whom he ministered—when he sought the interpretation of one and the other from God Himself, these lessons became clear to him. Then he was taught to pour out his own life blood, and not only that of the beasts, before the altar; then he was taught that there must be a higher and nobler blood than that, poured out for the whole congregation and for the human race, to purify it of its selfish corruptions, to unite it with God.
Even in the perplexities of the Levitical law, such a priest may have found subjects for reflection and meditation, which may have been, in the end, more profitable and instructive to him than rules which he could at once have understood. It has seemed to many, that the division of offerings into trespass-offerings, sin-offerings, thank-offerings, peace-offerings, is what logicians call a cross division; for must not the trespass-offering be also a sin-offering, a peace-offering, or a thank-offering? The classification, though it may offend the intellect, justifies itself to the heart. The desire to express thankfulness may be mixed inseparably with the desire to confess an outward trespass, or a secret sin. But one of these desires is always predominant over the other, and this predominance determines what a man is likely to seek for in a sacrifice if he is left to his own fancies. The divine Legislator meets him with these distinct names; they are what he needs; a more formal and seemingly accurate classification would defeat its own objects. The priest who took these hints as his guides and landmarks, would arrive at a deeper knowledge of himself and of his fellow-men. He would be preserved from the great temptation into which priests in all ages have fallen, of inventing a multitude of rules for cases of conscience, which produce the evil they profess to guard against, which corrupt and enslave the conscience they pretend to purify and relieve.
The mixture of services for what, in the dialect of divines, are called ceremonial impurities, that is to say, such as have no inherent moral evil in them, with actual trespasses, has been another complaint against these Levitical precepts. Here, too, I think, we are forgetting facts in our eagerness to make distinctions, and thus lose the real and radical distinctions which we should discern if we were less impatient. Bodily diseases do affect the mind in a thousand ways—affect it with fears of the future, with remembrances of the past, with a sense of wrong. They look like punishments; it is very little help merely to tell anyone who is suffering from them, that they are disguised mercies. If you are to make him feel that truth, you must show him that the Lord of all cares for all the evils that afflict him; for every kind of torment to which he is actually subject, whatever name psychologists or physiologists may please to bestow upon it. You must not leave him to find out, by subtle self-questioning, whether there is moral evil in what he has done or thought, or how much; if you do, he will involve himself in endless entanglements, from which no maxims or formulas will set him free. Treat him as such a being as he is; show that all his experience has been foreseen, and that it is not a solitary one; let him come and cast himself before the Lord, and seek the atonement He has promised; so you give him real help, so you make him a wiser as well as a more simple and true man. That this is done; that the difficulties which belong to human beings, and which would lead them to seek all evil helps, are turned to the account of good; that the rules come in where they are wanted, and do not attempt what they cannot perform; that they suggest what they are unable to teach, and so leave the minds of those who are disciplined by them to expand under higher and freer influences; this is, I conceive, the test of that legislation which is at once human and divine.
The great annual atonement, which is appointed in the sixteenth chapter of this book, carries us a step beyond those daily sacrifices, of which the opening passages speak, though the two parts of the scheme are strikingly in harmony. The general like the individual offerings is grounded wholly upon the will of God; like them, it assumes the nation to be already a holy and sacrificed nation, in spite of the sins of its particular members, and of its own public sins; like them, it starts from the assumption that God is seeking to reconcile those who have wandered, to Himself; like them, it assumes the will of the creature to be the great subject of the reconciliation; like them, it treats the priest as at once representing the holiness of the nation, and as sharing its sins. But with the dead animal is connected a living one, which goes away into the wilderness bearing the sins of the land. The bullock that was slain, the scapegoat that disappeared, suggested to the Israelite these two thoughts. God can entirely take away the evil of a people and of a man. ’If He takes it away, the Mediator, the sin-bearer, must in some unspeakable manner unite Death and Life.