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The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures (1854)
The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures - 1854 Author:Frederick Denison Maurice Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. (Lincoln's Inn, 3d Sunday in Lent, March 19,1854.) Genesis xxn. 1, 2. ' And it came to pass after these things, t... more »hat God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.' I Said some Sundays ago, that the offering of Abel did not imply a precept enjoining sacrifices, but that it did imply a revelation from God. That revelation was not an exceptional, or anomalous accident. It was just as much presumed in the ordinary tillage of the ground as in the most awful worship. The doctrine of the Bible, .as it comes out to us in the book of Genesis,—as it is consistently evolved in every subsequent book—is, that man would not be a thinking, reasonable, moral being, if there were not an intercourse between him and his Creator,—if God were not awakening him continually to a sense of that which he has to do, and of the principles upon which he is to do it.. . ; . D If Revelations of this kind are not strange and irregular, but orderly, the sacrifice which responded to them seemed to be of the same character. It was the most simple way,—more simple and primitive than words,—in which a man could confess that there was a higher Being, whom his eye could not see, who was near him, acting upon him, ruling him, causing the seeds which he had sown to bring forth, giving life to those creatures which were His servants and which were also subject to death. The wonder, awe and mystery of the universe, and of that creature who alone was capable of feeling awe and wonder, and of being perplexed by a mystery, came forth in ...« less