hem still, that is to say, the
weary sense of an unsettled score of offences, a position precarious and
unassured before the Judge.

We believe--nay, with the Psalms in our hands, such Psalms as xxiii.,
and xxxii., and ciii., we know--that for the really contrite and loyal
heart, even under the Law, there were large experiences of peace and
joy. But these blessings were not due to the sacrifices of the
tabernacle or the temple, however divinely ordered. They were due to
revelations from many quarters of the character of the Lord Jehovah, and
not least, assuredly, to the conviction--how could the more deeply
taught souls have helped it?--that this vast and death-dealing
ceremonial had _a goal_ which alone could explain it, in some
transcendent climax of remission. But in itself the ritual emphasized
not gladness but judgment, not love but the dread fact of guilt. And the
blood of goats could not for a moment be thought of (ver. 4) as _by
itself_ able to make peace with God. At best it laid stress on the need
of something which, while analogous to it on one side, should be
transcendently different and greater on the other.

The priests daily (ver. 11), the high priest yearly, as they slew and
burnt the victims, and sprinkled blood, and wafted incense, in view of
Israel's tale of offences against his King, were all, by their every
action, prophets of that mysterious something yet to come. They "made
remembrance of sins" (ver. 3), writing always anew upon the conscience
of the worshipper the certainty that sin, in its form of guilt, is a
tremendous reality in the court of God, that it calls importunately for
propitiation, while yet animal propitiations can never, by their very
nature, be really propitiatory of themselves. Yet the God of Israel had
commanded them; they could not be _mere_ forms therefore. What could
they be then but types and suggestions of a reality which should at last
justify the symbolism by a victorious fulfilment? Thus was an oracle
like Isa. liii. made possible. And thus, as we are taught expressly here
(verses 5-7), the oracle of Psalm xl. was made possible, in which
"sacrifices and offerings," though prescribed to Israel by his King,
were not "delighted in" by Him, not "willed" by Him for their own sake
at all, but in which One speaks to the Eternal about another and
supreme immolation, for which He who speaks "has come" to present
HIMSELF. "Ears hast Thou opened for me," runs the Hebrew (Ps. xl. 6