happen that gifts which in a more naïve religious condition were merely presents, should come to be regarded as the means of a mystic communion or even as a cover or protection from the displeasure felt by the Deity toward the sins of his worshippers.

The phenomena of the developed sacrificial system in Judaism seem to sustain some such general view as this. Different offerings are seen to reflect differing moods and motives in the worshipper. In more primitive times we find the peace offering associated with the sacrificial feast, expressive of gladness and rejoicing, while the burnt offering is associated with occasions of solemnity, awe, and fear. In the developed Levitical system we have, for example,1 the sacrifices of worship, such as the burnt offering expressive of the people's reverence for Yahweh; the thank offerings presented on special festive occasions as expressions of gratitude to God, and the sin and guilt offerings whose special object is to express the sense of sin and to obtain reconciliation with God.

Now, even if it were possible by psychological analysis or historic research to trace these various forms of sacrifice back to a common original motive, the result would not greatly aid us in our present purpose. The actual working system of sacrifice in Judaism was complex. It was many-sided, like the religious life out of which it sprang. It expressed, in its various parts, gratitude, rejoicing, fellowship, penitence. So far as it influenced primitive Christian thought and supplied the categories for its expression, it would naturally emphasize no one single element of religious experience, but rather that whole range of emotions and convictions of which it was the ceremonial expression. We shall see that this general view of the case is warranted by the testimony of the New Testament in which we find those various illustrative uses made of sacrificial ideas which the manysided system of offerings would lead us to anticipate.

One question requires a more particular consideration : Was the sacrificial victim's life regarded as taking the place 1 I follow here the classification of Schultz, O. T. Theol. I. 376 sq.

of the offerer's life? Was the animal conceived of as a penal substitute for the sinner? As has been already indicated, this view has been widely held among scholars and is, of course, the popular assumption regarding the meaning of sacrifice. Let us review the arguments which are advanced in its support. The main reliance for the theory is placed upon the description in Lev. xvi. of the ceremony of sending away the scapegoat into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement. There we read: "And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a man that is in readiness into the wilderness; and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land; and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness" (vv. 21, 22). It is further stated that he who thus dismisses the goat in the wilderness incurs defilement and must wash his clothes and bathe his flesh before he returns to the camp (v. 26). Now, it is argued, we have here the most distinct statement that the sins of the people are put by the priest upon the head of this victim for Azazel and by him borne away into the desert. In the same connection (v. 28) we are told that a similar defilement was contracted by him who burned the flesh of the sin offerings. The inference is that this contamination was due to the fact that these victims were regarded as laden with the people's guilt, and their death conceived as a substitute for the people's penalty.

An argument closely related to the foregoing is derived from the supposed import of the laying on of hands upon sacrificial victims. It is repeatedly enjoined in the Levitical ritual that in the making of private offerings the offerer shall place his hands upon the head of his oblation (Lev. iii. 2, 8, 13; iv. 4), and in case of certain sin offerings on behalf of the whole congregation, that "the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock before the Lord" (Lev. iv. 15). In other instances this ceremony is performed,

as in the case of the scapegoat, by the priests (Lev. viii. 14). The theory in question regards it as selfevident or, at any rate, as well established, that the laying on of hands implies, in such cases, the substitution of the victim for the sinner and directly denotes the imposition of the offerer's sins and the transfer of his guilt. Thus the animal's death would replace the sinner's punishment. His sin is punished vicariously and its penalty is therefore remitted.

Further, it is contended that the natural import of the whole ritual is substitutionary. The slaughter of a pure victim on whose head the owner places his hands; the sprinkling of the blood on the altar by the priest; the consumption of the victim's flesh by fire-what can this so naturally mean- what, indeed, can it mean at all, except the substitution of the animal's death for the offerer's punishment, whereby he is, either symbolically or really, freed from the penalty of his sins?

In this interpretation of the import of sacrifice we find the elements of the penal substitution theory of the death of Christ. One has but to transfer this explanation, mutatis mutandis, to the problem of the saving value of Christ's sufferings and death and carry out its logical implications, in order to construct the theory in detail. From this Old Testament source that theory always derived plausible support, especially in the popular mind. The categories of the theory in question naturally lend themselves to the development of a theory of salvation by substitute through a system of equivalences and imputations. The explanation is clear, striking, and realistic. There is nothing vague, nothing mysterious about it. As the sacrificial animal died in place of the sinner, so Christ's death was the penal equivalent and substitute of the eternal death which our sins deserved, and having been thus endured by him vicariously, need not be again endured by us; whence arises the possibility of our forgiveness. I am only concerned here to point out three things: So far as this argument derives confirmation from the sacrificial ritual, it assumes (1) the indisputable cor

rectness of the substitutionary interpretation; (2) the appropriation by Christ himself and the apostolic Church of this conception and its corollaries in their application to his death; and (3) the entire legitimacy of transferring over the ideas underlying a system of animal sacrifice to the interpretation of Christ's saving work. These points we must carefully keep in mind as we proceed.

With regard to the first point it must be noted that a decided and increasing majority of specialists in the study of the subject would greatly modify or entirely deny the theory of the substitutionary import of Jewish sacrifice. Some of the difficulties which it encounters are as follows: (1) The ceremonies connected with the sending of the scapegoat into the wilderness prove nothing concerning the import of sacrifice. The flesh of this goat was not burned; atonement was not made by its blood; it was not a sacrifice at all. The origin and meaning of the goat "for Azazel" are indeed obscure. Azazel, who is not mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament,1 appears to have been conceived as a demon-prince who inhabited the desert, and the ceremony of delivering over to him the goat, laden with the sins of the people, was probably a realistic way of representing their sins as now borne away to the evil spirit to whom they belonged. The Levitical ritual thus preserves, probably, an earlier, popular belief to which there are many analogies among primitive peoples. "The carrying away of the people's guilt to an isolated and desert region has its nearest analogies, not in ordinary atoning sacrifices, but in those physical methods of getting rid of an infectious taboo which characterize the lowest forms of superstition. The same form of disinfection recurs in the Levitical legislation, where a live bird is made to fly away with the contagion of leprosy (Lev. xiv. 7, 53)."2

We turn, next, to the rite of the laying on of hands. Outside the sacrificial ritual we meet with several uses of

1 He appears in The Book of Enoch, ch. x., as the leader of the evil angels who formed unions with the daughters of men (cf. Gen. vi. 2–4). 2 W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 422.

this ceremony. It is a symbol of blessing when Jacob places his hands upon the heads of his sons (Gen. xlviii. 14). The witnesses laid their hands upon those whom they had heard to blaspheme, apparently in solemn attestation of their testimony (Lev. xxiv. 14). The Levites were set apart to priestly functions by the imposition of hands (Num. viii. 10), and by the same rite Moses set apart Joshua as his successor (Num. xxvii. 18, 23; Deut. xxxiv. 9). Now the general idea underlying this ceremony can hardly be doubtful; it is that of benediction or dedication. What the precise idea is in case of the witnesses is not quite clear. The act may denote the devotion of the accused to the death penalty, or serve to identify the witnesses as those who are responsible for the accusation. But what is of principal importance to be noted is that, so far as the act symbolizes impartation, it is the impartation of good; no instances are found in which any evil, such as guilt or a curse, is conceived to be transferred to any person by the laying on of hands. The presumption, therefore, is that such is not the case in the sacrificial ritual. But there is no intimation in connection with any sacrifice that the offerer's guilt is regarded as transferred to the animal. Were that the case it would seem that the victim's flesh would be unclean; on the contrary, it is "most holy" (Lev. x. 17) and is eaten by the priest. The probability, therefore, is that the laying on of hands does not denote, in the case of the sacrifices, the transfer of guilt, but some other idea, such as the devotion of the victim to God or the worshipper's acknowledgment of it as his own.1

The substitutionary theory encounters a further difficulty in the fact that offerings were not accepted in atonement

1 "In ordinary burnt-offerings and sin-offerings the imposition of hands is not officially interpreted by the Law as a transference of sin to the victim, but rather has the same sense as in acts of blessing or consecration (Gen. xlviii. 14; Num. viii. 10; Deut. xxxiv. 9), where the idea, no doubt, is that the physical contact between the parties serves to identify them, but not specially to transfer guilt from the one to the other." W. R. Smith, op. cit., p. 423. Similarly, Schultz says that "by the laying on of the hand sin is not transferred to the victim," but by