Thus on the original human society, the family of the first man, God had impressed the idea that man by sin had forfeited his life before God; that there must be reparation for that forfeiture; that such reparation was one day to be made by the offering of an innocent victim; that in the meantime the vicarious sacrifice of animals should be offered to God as a confession of man's guilt; that their blood poured out before Him and sprinkled on the sacrifices should be accepted by God in token of an expiation. Now what we have seen of the original institution of sacrifice will help to show how absolutely divine an act it was which our Lord took upon Himself in establishing a sacrifice for His people. But He was not only ordering a new worship; He was likewise at once fulfilling and abolishing by that fulfilment the old, that which had prevailed from the beginning of man's race. Instead of the blood of animals poured out profusely all over the world, He said, "This is the chalice, the new testament in My Blood, which shall be shed for you;" and speaking as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, using also the special sacrificial term, He said, "This is My Body, which is given for you; do this for a commemoration of Me." The act was doubly a divine act, in appointing a sacrifice for the whole human race, and in making His own Body that sacrifice; the first an act of divine authority, the second not that only, but pointing out the personal union of the Godhead with the Manhood, in virtue of which the communication of His flesh gives life to the world, as He had foretold a year before: "The bread which I will give is My flesh for the life of the world."[96] Thus the Christian sacrifice is the counterpart of the original institution, and throws the light of fulfilment upon that offering of the blood of bulls and goats which seemed in itself so unreasonable; which would have been so, but that it earned in itself the mystery hidden from the foundation of the world. Thus it was that the animal creation placed below man was chosen to bear witness in its flesh and blood to the offering which was to restore man, and the Lord of life made use of the life which He had given to signify in a speaking prophecy that supreme exhibition of His mercy, His justice, and His majesty, which He had purposed from the beginning. If the earth without Calvary might seem to have been a slaughter-house, Calvary made it an altar.