(_d_) It must be, if possible, _voluntary_. A Sacrifice was thought to lose half its efficacy unless it were a free-will offering. Among Greeks and Romans, water was poured into the ears of oxen brought to sacrifice, to make them nod their heads, and so give an appearance of consent to their death. (_e_) It must be in part consumed by the fire, in part by the offerer. The fire was the symbol of God accepting; the participation in the sacrifice showed the man who offered that he received the benefits of the Sacrifice. 3. Sacrifice was not only expiatory, but it was also _vicarious_; that is to say, from the beginning man saw that the innocent might die for the guilty. Now this could only be so seen because indistinctly the human Conscience looked to the One Sinless Victim Who would by His Sacrifice of Himself, put away the sins of the world. But for this it would have been unreasonable. It was, however, an universal belief that the just might suffer for the unjust, the blameless for the guilty, and that was why the sacrificer sought out the spotless victim as the victim. This belief also was the occasion of numerous sublime heroic acts of self-devotion in the heathen world, when one man offered himself for the fault of all the people: as when Codrus died for his people, Curtius plunged into the gulf in the Forum, Decius offered his breast to the weapons of his enemies. It was this belief which caused sacrifices to be multiplied, and yet it was certain that these numerous sacrifices never really took away the sense of guilt that weighed on mankind. "The law, having the shadow of good things to come, and not the very image (_i.e._, reality) of the things, can never with these sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshippers once purged should have no more conscience of sin. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance (or recapitulation) again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." (Heb. x. 1-4.) [Illustration] Wednesday in Holy Week. _THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST._ 1. As the sin of the world was infinite, it was not possible that any sacrifice that man could offer could put away the guilt of sin. Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ came down from Heaven to make a full, perfect, and sufficient Sacrifice for sin. He died the Just for the unjust, the Sinless for the guilty, to reconcile us to God by the taking away of the guilt of our transgression.