then, our inquiry is this: What presumptions concerning the Christian doctrine of salvation are created by the ideas prevailing in the Hebrew religion? Or, to take a specific topic: To what conceptions of atonement through Christ's death would Jewish ideas of sacrifice naturally lend themselves? But any result which we may attain in this field will be of indirect, rather than of direct, value to us. Suppose, for example, that it could be shown that the Jews had a perfectly definite theory of the import of sacrifice. It would not follow that the Christian doctrine of atonement could be deduced from it. We should still have to ask: Does the New Testament directly adopt and sanction this Jewish conception? Does it in no essential respect transcend it, and, if so, does it not in transcending it annul some of its elements? And we should also be warranted in asking the still more fundamental question: To what extent are these Jewish ideas accordant or reconcilable with the essential principles of the Christian religion which we may derive from the life and teaching of Jesus? I am well aware that all such considerations make our task vastly more difficult than it is popularly supposed to be, but nothing can be gained by evading difficulties which belong, in the nature of the case, to the historical investigation of the subject.

There are two classes of inquiries concerning the sacrifices which, for our purpose, should be broadly distinguished. One relates to the origin and original import of Semitic sacrifice in general; the other to the religious meaning and value of the sacrifices for the Jews, who practised them under the developed Levitical system. Within recent years great industry and learning have been devoted to the first class of questions. While these investigations are not without their importance, it cannot be said that they have reached any very clear or definite results. Such problems are involved in the obscurity which always besets inquiries into the origin and motives of rites and customs which are not only ancient, but which probably arose from naive conceptions and undefined feelings of which we possess no clear expression. But

even if the problems concerning the origin of Semitic sacrifice could be solved, we should not be greatly aided in determining what the sacrifices meant for the Jews in the Levitical period. Such practices as that of sacrifice undergo great modifications of meaning in the course of time and in the developing moral and institutional life of nations.

The old dispute as to whether sacrifice was instituted by divine command or arose naturally out of the religious nature and wants of man, is an interesting one from the point of view of historical revelation, but our purpose could not be greatly furthered by any theory concerning it. The practical import of a religious ritual could not be determined by the mode in which it originated, even if known. It is scarcely needful to say that the latter of the two conceptions mentioned is so strongly favored by the history of religion, and by the critical investigation of the Old Testament books as to have become practically universal among modern scholars.

In regard to the question, What was the primary motive which prompted the offering of sacrifices? a considerable variety of opinion prevails. The theory that sacrifices were originally gifts to the divinity has been espoused, for example, by Herbert Spencer and E. B. Tylor among anthropologists and by Hermann Schultz and George F. Moore among theologians. We are reminded that in primitive times men thought of their gods in an anthropomorphic way and conceived of them as enjoying gifts of food and drink, after the manner of an earthly chieftain or king. In illustration of this view, reference is made to the offering in the Jewish system of the fruits of the soil, to the thank offerings and covenant sacrifices made in connection with festive or solemn meals, and to the fact that the burning flesh of the sacrificial animal is regarded as a sweet-smelling savor unto Yahweh. Even the expiatory sacrifices are held to have been primarily presents, whereby it was believed that the anger of the Deity was appeased and his favor recovered.1

1 Cf. Schultz, O. T. Theol. I. 388.

Others have found in the native tendency of man to worship the motive of sacrifice. In this view, the offerings are acts of homage to the Deity, indicative of man's consciousness of dependence and desire for obedience. The sacrifices are virtually prayers and, as such, may express a variety of sentiments and aspirations, such as adoration, repentance, and supplication. This theory has been advocated by Karl Bähr, F. D. Maurice, and R. Smend, who traces sacrifice in Israel through these stages: service or worship (2 Sam. xv. 8), eating together, communion, and reparation or atonement for sin. Somewhat akin to this view is the opinion that sacrifices were primarily common meals, of which the divinity partook with his worshippers. This conception is sometimes so carried out as to denote a mystic sacramental communion between the Deity and men. The theory is thought to be confirmed by the frequent association of sacrifices with sacred feasts, by the widespread idea of the sacredness of animals, and by the phenomena of totemism. It numbers among its advocates some of the most eminent specialists in this field of inquiry, among them Wellhausen, W. Robertson Smith, Tiele, J. G. Frazer, and F. B. Jevons. Albrecht Ritschl advanced a view differing from all the foregoing, to the effect that the sacrifice was conceived of as 66 covering" or protecting the offerer not from the holy displeasure, but from the glory of Yahweh. In this view there underlay the sacrifices the idea that the presence of Yahweh was so terrible that man must perish unless hidden or covered before it (cf. Gen. xxxii. 30; Judg. vi. 22, 23; xiii. 22). Ritschl, accordingly, denied that the sacrifices have special reference to man's sins; they relate rather to his weakness and creaturehood. Thus they are conceived as referring rather to the natural attributes of both man and God - the creaturely condition of man and the majesty of God - than to their moral nature and relations.1

Finally, there remains the substitutionary or penal satfaction theory of sacrifice, according to which the animal

1 See Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, II. 201–203.

is conceived of as taking the place of the sinner and suffering death in his stead. This theory is commonly, though not necessarily, associated with the belief that the sacrificial system was of direct divine appointment. This has long been the popular view in Protestant theology and has been regarded as one of the chief supports of the penal interpretation of the death of Christ. The argument is: As the sacrificial animal suffered a vicarious death for the sinner whom he represented, so Christ endured the penalty due to the sins of those whose place he assumed before the divine law, and, as God was pleased to accept the animal's death in substitution for the death of the sinner, so he looks upon the death of Christ as the equivalent of the sinner's punishment whereby the possibility of forgiveness is opened to him. It will be noticed that the argument proceeds on two assumptions, which we shall have to consider later, namely: (1) that the notion of a poena vicaria is the fundamental idea of the sacrificial system, and (2) that this idea and its associations, supposed to underlie the Jewish system of animal sacrifice, are directly available as categories with which to explain the occasion and import of the sufferings and death of Christ. The theory in question may be called the common, or traditional, view of the subject, and is expounded in such earlier treatises on the subject as Fairbairn's Typology and Kurtz's Der alttestamentliche Opfercultus. Some recent writers who cannot be regarded as theologically predisposed in its favor, have also given it their sanction.1 Paul

1 Principal A. M. Fairbairn expresses the opinion that the Jewish sacrifices were propitiatory, but that it does not follow that the sacrifice of Christ had that character: "In the Levitical, as in other religious systems, the sacrifice was offered to please God, to win his favor, to propitiate him by the surrender of some object precious to man. But in the Christian system this standpoint is transcended; the initiative lies with God. Whatever the death of Christ may signify, it does not mean an expedient for quenching the wrath of God, or for buying off man from his vengeance. This was a great gain for religion." The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 500. Whether this view of Jewish sacrifice, which seems to place it on a level with the propitiatory offerings of heathen religions, is warranted, will be considered as we proceed. If correct, it is certainly a welcome assurance that it has been discarded by Christianity.

Volz defends it in the Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft for 1901, and H. J. Holtzmann, though holding that the idea of substitution was originally foreign to the ritual, declares that in the popular thought, especially in the late Jewish period, "everything pressed toward the assumption that the offering of a life, substituted for sinners according to God's appointment, cancelled the death penalty which they had incurred, and that consequently the offered blood of the sacrificial victims expiated sin as a surrogate for the life of the guilty."1

Many plausible considerations are urged in favor of each of these theories, and yet no one of them seems entirely adequate. The probability is that the origin and motives of sacrifice are not so simple as any one theory in regard to them would imply. Religion is a complex affair, and various motives are operative in the development of its beliefs and practices. Moreover, these motives, though distinguishable, are more or less closely akin to each other. Let us assume for the moment the correctness of the simplest theory of sacrifice, the gift theory. But the idea of a present to the Deity is itself an act of homage or worship. The gift of what has value for the giver is made in recognition of the superior rights or claims of the divinity. And this idea of homage, in turn, would naturally deepen into the feeling of fellowship or communion. If the offered gift is regarded as sacred; if, for example, the idea obtains that there is some mysterious connection between the life of the divinity and the life or blood of the animal, then the conviction will naturally arise that in offering the animal in sacrifice the worshipper enters into communion with the Power whom he would honor. Then, again, when the sense of sin is deepened in men; when the conception of the divine holiness arises and man appreciates the moral separation between himself and the Deity, it will then be natural that sacrifice should assume a more distinct reference to sin. It will become the means whereby sin is confessed and reconciliation with the offended divinity sought. Thus it would naturally

1 Neutest. Theol. I. 68.