with the great question, What is the
doctrine which lies at the heart of the great institution of sacrifice?

We are not free to confine its meaning altogether to that which was
visible at the time. This would contradict the whole doctrine of
development, the intention of God that Christianity should blossom from
the bud of Judaism, and the explicit assertion that the prophets were
made aware that the full meaning and the date of what they uttered was
reserved for the instruction of a later period (1 Peter i. 12).

But neither may we overlook the first palpable significance of any
institution. Sacrifices never could have been devised to be a blind and
empty pantomime to whole generations, for the benefit of their
successors. Still less can one who believes in a genuine revelation to
Moses suppose that their primary meaning was a false one, given in order
that some truth might afterwards develop out of it.

What, then, might a pious and well-instructed Israelite discern beneath
the surface of this institution?

To this question there have been many discordant answers, and the
variance is by no means confined to unbelieving critics. Thus, a
distinguished living expositor says in connection with the Paschal
institution, "We speak not of blood as it is commonly understood, but of
blood as the life, the love, the heart,--the whole quality of Deity."
But it must be answered that Deity is the last suggestion which blood
would convey to a Jewish mind: distinctly it is creature-life that it
expresses; and the New Testament commentators make it plain that no
other notion had even then evolved itself: they think of the offering of
the Body of Jesus Christ, not of His Deity.[20] Neither of this feast,
nor of that which the gospel of Jesus has evolved from it, can we find
the solution by forgetting that the elements of the problem are, not
deity, but a Body and Blood.

But when we approach the theories of rationalistic thinkers, we find a
perfect chaos of rival speculations.

We are told that the Hebrew feasts were really agricultural--"Harvest
festivals," and that the epithet Passover had its origin in the passage
of the sun into Aries. But this great festival had a very secondary and
subordinate connection with harvest (only the waving of a sheaf upon the
second day) while the older calendar which was displaced to do it honour
was truly agricultural, as may still be seen by the phrase, "The feast
of ingathering _at the end o