fession, acceptance of the appointed expiation,
submission to be freed from guilt by a method so humiliating and
admonitory. There was no undue exaltation in the mind of any priest
whose heart went with this "remembrance of sins."

The bullock was immediately slain at the door of "the tent of meeting";
and to show that the shedding of his blood was an essential part of the
rite, part of it was put with the finger on the horns of the altar, and
the remainder was poured out at the base. Only then might the fat and
the kidney be burned upon the altar; but it is never said of any
sin-offering, as presently of the burnt-offering and the
peace-offerings, that it is "a sweet savour before Jehovah" (vers. 18,
25)--a phrase which is only once extended to a trespass-offering for a
purely unconscious lapse (Lev. iv. 31). The sin-offering is, at the
best, a deplorable necessity. And therefore the notion of a gift,
welcome to Jehovah, is carefully shut out: no portion of such an
offering may go to maintain the priests: all must be burned "with fire
without the camp; it is a sin-offering" (ver. 14). Rightly does the
Epistle to the Hebrews emphasize this fact: "The bodies of those beasts
whose blood is brought into the Holy Place ... as an offering for sin"
are burned without the camp. The bodies of other sacrifices were not
reckoned unfit for food.[40] And so there is a striking example of
humility, as well as an instructive coincidence, in the fact that Jesus
suffered without the gate, being the true Sin-offering, "that He might
sanctify the people through His own blood" (Heb. xiii. 11, 12).

Thus, by sacrifice for sin, the priest is rendered fit to offer up to
God the symbol of a devoted life. Again, therefore, the hands of Aaron
and his sons are laid upon the head of the ram, because they come to
offer what represents themselves in another sense than that of
expiation--a sweet savour now, an offering made by fire unto Jehovah
(ver. 18). And to show that it is perfectly acceptable to Him, the whole
ram shall be burnt upon the altar, and not now without the camp: "it is
a burnt-offering unto the Lord." Such is the appointed way of God with
man--first expiation, then devotion.

The third animal was a "peace-offering" (ver. 28). This is wrongly
explained to mean an offering by which peace is made, for then there
could be no meaning in what went before. It is the offering of one who
is now in a state of peace with God, and who is the