, 'It is expedient for you that one man should die for the
people, and that the whole nation perish not[17],' the typical
expression of the quite immoral notion[18] of the forcible sacrifice of
an innocent person in order to exempt a guilty race from punishment.
In our Lord's teaching, on the other hand, we find the doctrine of
atonement raised to its highest moral power. As the Forerunner had
revived the teaching of the later Isaiah by pointing to Him as 'the
Lamb of God who taketh away (i.e. taketh up and expiateth) the sin of
the world[19],' so Christ Himself spoke unmistakeably of the new
covenant which He came to inaugurate, as to be based upon the
sacrificial offering of His body and the outpouring of His blood[20]:
spoke also of 'the remission of sins' as the benefit to be expected
{147} from His expiation. But no teacher in the world ever made it so
plain that God can be satisfied with nothing that any other can do for
us--with nothing but actual likeness to Him in ourselves. No teacher
ever made it so plain that what we are to desire is not to be let off
punishment, but to be actually freed from sin. He left no room for
doubt that only by following His steps, even to the cross and surrender
of our lives, can we share His fellowship. The very life which is
offered in sacrifice to lay the foundation of the new covenant is a
life or spirit which we are to share. We are to eat and drink His
sacrificed flesh and blood--the blood which is the life--and so to be
one with Him and He with us. He sacrificed Himself, in other words, in
order to make possible, through His life and Spirit, a new covenanted
society, in which men should have perfect fellowship with God and with
one another. He did not reject the idea of a propitiation won for man
by His vicarious sacrifice--the truth is far from that--but He keeps it
in inseparable connexion with the life which is to be based upon it;
and in the eucharist He brought back the idea of sacrifice to what had
been its starting-point in all primitive usages. 'The one point,' says
{148} Professor Robertson-Smith, 'that comes out clear and strong (from
the examination of ancient sacrificial customs), is that the
fundamental idea of ancient sacrifice is sacramental communion, and
that all atoning rites are ultimately to be regarded as owing their
efficacy to a communication of divine life to the worshipper, and to
the establishment or confirmation of a living bond between them