The Jewish Altar Author:John Leighton 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: CHAPTER V. CHRIST WAS NOT TO BE BEAD IN THE ALTAE KITUAL. It is saying very little to assert—what has been already intimated—that not even the more pious o... more »f the Jewish Church saw anything of Christ personally in their appointed sacrifices. Although Christ is largely in Jewish prophecy, and was there seen by the Jewish people, nowhere in their history, in their confessions, in their psalms of praise, do we read a solitary expression indicating that the service of the Altar led their thoughts on to a suffering Eedeemer. But if that service had so much as suggested to their minds the great event of the cross, they would undoubtedly have often expressed the thought, and we should be able to find a frequent record of it. Nay, if Israel saw Christ at all in their service, they must, because of its many details, have seen nearly everything about Him ; and we should find them again and again saying so. But their silence is conclusive of the fact that they saw him not. Do we clothe our confessions, prayers, and hymns of praise in gospel language ? We cannot avoid it. But the more pious of the Jewish Church, in their words of praise and prayer, in their suit for mercy, rather depreciated sacrifice. " Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I bring it." But if " the Altar preached Christ," was it seemly to slight it ? We may take yet higher ground. The Jewish people, after a most diligent use of their facilities for learning,could not in reason be expected to read in their offerings the sacrifice which was to be made for the sins of the world. To insist on the contrary is altogether gratuitous. The offering of a bullock's blood was certainly not an act so expressive of the future—of any future—as to be self- explaining of a distant and coming event as peculiar as was the death of...« less