the rite of sacrifice and the doctrine of atonement. But in the next place that rite and that doctrine must be assigned to those rites which showed the necessity of holiness in the people of a holy God.

CHAPTER XIII.

JEWISH SYMBOLS.-LEPROSY.

IN the Jewish law we find many symbols to which it may be enough here to make mere allusion, as the distinction of clean and unclean beasts, the uncleanness of men and women in their issues, the uncleanness of women for a certain time after childbirth, the uncleanness of lepers, the uncleanness contracted by touching a dead body, or the carcase of an unclean animal, &c. It would require more space than we can afford to the subject to point out the meaning of all these symbols; but, in general, their meaning and purpose are easily to be perceived. All of them are such as must have frequently recurred to the observation of every one; they were thus permanent symbols, not instituted by the law, except in the case of clean and unclean beasts, but arising out of circumstances for which the law provided. The most difficult to be understood, is perhaps that of leprosy. Leprosy is a fearful disease; but we are apt to wonder that instead of the leper being pointed out as a special object of compassion, requiring therefore the most affectionate treatment and tender care, with the fullest enjoyment of religious privileges as necessary for his consolation in his deep distress, he was excluded from the congregation of the Lord, and debarred from the enjoyment of ordinary religious privileges. It is not a sufficient explanation of this, that contact with a leper is dangerous, and that the law therefore guarded against the spread of the disease-if such was the case, a point on which there has been diversity of opinion. Many passages of Scripture show us that leprosy was a symbol of sin or of sinful corruption, and the exclusion of lepers from the congregation thus acquires a peculiar and im

portant symbolic significancy. As the leper was forbidden to approach the altar, or to join in the worship of the tabernacle or the temple, so the sinner, the man of wicked life and corrupt heart,-is incapable of any true access to God. As only after being cleansed of his leprosy, the leper could rejoin the company of God's worshippers-of them that kept holiday-so the sinner can only be admitted into the spiritual sanctuary after being cleansed from his guilt and from the corruption of his heart, in the way which God has appointed.

CHAPTER XIV.

JEWISH SYMBOLS. THE PROHIBITION OF BLOOD.

A MOST important symbolic law amongst the Israelites was the prohibition of the eating of blood. It was not because blood is not a very wholesome article of food. That it is not easily digested is true, but this is certainly not the reason of the prohibition; nor is any peculiarity in the quality of swine's flesh, or of the flesh of any other unclean animal, the reason of its prohibition in the Jewish law. The reason of the prohibition of blood is rather to be found in the law which requires the pouring of the blood of the sacrifice at the bottom of the altar, and other similar applications of it for sacred purposes; and in the connection of all this with the shedding of the blood of the true sacrifice, the Great Antitype of all the sacrifices appointed by the law, by which we are cleansed from all sin. We read also in the law, as a reason for the strict prohibition of the eating of blood, that "the life of all flesh is in the blood" (Lev. xvii. 11); and thus we learn to regard the shedding of blood in sacrifice as specially significant of the death of Christ; and we see why the blood not only of animals offered in sacrifice, but of those slain in the chase-the blood of beast or fowl-was invested by the Jewish law with a peculiar sacredness, so that no one might eat of it, under pain of being "cut off "-excluded from all the privileges of the people of God. It is a remarkable fact that this simple statement of the Divine law, "The life of all flesh is in the blood," accords with recent physiological discoveries. The Bible was not meant to teach natural history, physiology, nor any other branch of science; but it is worthy of observation how perfectly its statements made with regard to entirely different things, and its mere

allusions, accord with every discovery of science. It does not limit the number of the planets to five, as Milton does in his Paradise Lost:

"And ye five other wandering stars," Nor does it give any particular period for the material history of the earth, although its enemies have endeavoured to make it appear that it does so, and some of its mistaken defenders have unhappily interpreted it in the same manner. And so it is far from teaching the physiological truth of the functions of blood in the animal frame; but with reference to the law which prohibits the eating of blood, it says, "For the life of all flesh is in the blood," and thousands of years after this brief statement has been made, its truth is proved by scientific discovery. The blood is found to supply the nutriment of every part of the animal through the frame of which it circulates; every particle of flesh and bone and nerve and skin is formed from it; and by it also the constant waste of the system is carried away, and life and health are maintained.