THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER.

Our High Priest on His Day of Atonement,

PART III.

5. THE High Priest slew the sin-offerings at the door of the Tabernacle; and then, taking of their blood, passed in with it through the vail to the Holiest of all. The latter part of the type was fulfilled, as we are taught,* in His Ascension. What act of His, then, answers to the former?

The answer will be,-His death upon the cross: and unquestionably it is here only that the Sacrifice of the Divine Victim was consummated. But there is a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews which leads us to view the scene of Calvary in the light of a later part of the type. "The bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate."† Earlier than this, therefore, there must have been something answering to the slaying of the victims at the door of the Tabernacle: nor need we look far to find it. On the evening of this day before He suffered, Jesus took bread, and brake it, and said, “This is My Body, which is (now being) broken for you." Again, He took the cup into which wine had been poured, and said,

"This is My Blood of the New Testament, which is (now being) shed for many for the remission of sins." By these acts and in these words our Lord did verily and indeed make His soul an offering for sin. Standing before His disciples, living and unharmed, He nevertheless held forth the broken bread and the poured-out wine, and said, "This is My Body, broken: this is My Blood, shed." And therefore the Apostle tells us that as often as we eat that bread and drink that cup, we do shew the Lord's death till He come. We could not do so in the celebration of the Supper had He not done so in its institution; if we shew His death there in commemoration, He must have shewn it by anticipation. The morrow saw the actual immolation; but here was the Priest at the altar. Our services this day signify the truth thus stated. We celebrate the Eucharist in especial memorial of its institution. Therein we shew the Lord's death as He shewed it, as it essentially was, a sacrifice to God. Then the bread and wine at this time consecrated and offered are borne forth to a place without the sanctuary, where they are reserved during the night. On Good Friday the same bread and wine are brought forth, and without any further act of commemorative sacrifice are consumed by us, in the silence of sorrow and contrition of spirit.

In the Passion of our Lord we are thus, as by the teaching of the Scripture we have cited, led to see the antitype of the consumption of the bodies of the victims by fire without the camp. The offering at the door of the Tabernacle was a priestly act; but this was performed by servants, who became by doing it unclean until the evening. So Jesus offered Himself on Holy Thursday; but on Good Friday Herod and the rulers of the Jews and all the people laid hold upon Him, and with wicked hands

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crucified and slew Him. His blood is upon them and upon their children; and all Israel shall remain unclean because of it until the evening of this age. Nor did the consciousness of Jesus fail to correspond with the circumstances which surrounded Him. He was made sin for us; He was made a curse for us: and He knew it. But as the darkness deepens, and the ghostly enemies gather around, and we draw near to the " 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani?" we need another portion of the type to express the meaning of what we see. And this I think we have in the Scape-goat.

Behold, then, besides the goat of the sin offering, another. That is for the Lord; but this for Azazel, the evil spirit.* All the iniquities of the children of Israel are confessed and put upon its head; and it is sent away alive into the wilderness, there to bear upon it all their iniquities into a land not inhabited. If any have seen the picture of "The Scape-goat" which his brush has painted who gave us "The Light of the World," they will have been aided to realise what it means. In the visage of the poor animal, as it stumbles among the salt blocks of the shores of the Dead Sea, is seen the suffering and the horror of utter loneliness,—so terrible to a creature of gregarious habits.

This type also, with its farther and darker hints of delivery over to Satan, did our blessed Lord exhaust. This was the hour and the power of darkness. The Prince of this world came, though he found nothing in Him. But there fell upon the soul of Jesus the horror of great darkness, in which He seemed forsaken, not of man only, but of God. Hitherto He had been able to say,

* See Readings on the Liturgy, vol. I. p. 359.

+ Luke xxii. 53.

John xiv. 30.

when even His disciples deserted Him-" And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me." But now"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? why art Thou so far from helping Me, and from the words of My roaring?" "Mine iniquities have taken hold upon Me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of My head, so that My heart faileth Me." "Lord, why castest Thou off My soul? why hidest Thou Thy face from Me? Thy fierce wrath goeth over Me; Thy terrors have cut Me off. Lover and friend hast Thou put far from Me, and Mine acquaintance into darkness."

"O Jesu, Victim blest!

What else but love divine

Could Thee constrain to open thus

That sacred heart of Thine?"

May the same love constrain us, that we henceforth live not unto ourselves, but to Him who died for us, and rose again!

* John xvi. 32.

GOOD FRIDAY.

The Fellowship of Christ's Sufferings.

It is directed that upon this day the Holy Communion shall be administered in silence. No Anthem shall be sung, or Prayer said, or Benediction given: but the people shall depart in silence, meditating upon the Passion of the Lord.

In taking the Passion of the Lord Jesus out from among the many incidents of His life, and making it a special theme for meditation, we are effecting no mere arbitrary separation. His Passion was a definite period, a pre-arranged order of events, a distinct portion of the work He wrought on our behalf. From an early period of His public ministry its horror of great darkness became visible before Him, and cast a shadow broad and deep upon the path He trod towards it. He spoke of it as the "hour," the "cup," the "baptism." "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." "Father, save Me from this hour; but for this cause came I to this hour Father, glorify Thy Name." "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized withal? The Agony in the garden, bitter as it was, was but the foretaste of the sharper agony of the Passion itself. His prayer then was, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me!" And when in humble submission He was able to say, "O My Father, if this cup may not pass